Honduras sent away, with some controversy

The final game Friday finished up the second round in Group E, with Ecuador facing Honduras in a South/Central American matchup.

Judging by the first few seconds, it appeared that Ecuador's way of dealing with Honduras' very physical play was to just go to ground and hope for fouls.

Honduras opened the scoring (for the game, and for their country) in the 31st minute, with Costly taking advantage of a terrible misplay by the Ecuadoran center back.

It took only a couple of minutes for Ecuador to equalize, though, when a shot from the top-left of the box deflected off the inside of the leg of a defender and straight to Valencia for an easy tap-in.

Honduras had some great free kick attempts at 45 minute mark, and bigger controversy came about in stoppage time, as they scored, but was disallowed by refs.  Unclear exactly why, although might have been a handball.  For sure, Bengtson got a yellow card out of the mess.

One thing that was interesting was that Honduras had just about no chances via gradual build-up.  It was pretty much all counterattacks and attacks over the top.  In the 63rd, they actually scored again (arguably, for the third time in the game), but it was disallowed for being offsides.

Ecuador missed one just after, when Guagua's header went way off-base.  But it only held them up for a minute, as they scored for real on a mirror-image play that did make it into the net.

One semi-game-related thing that came up from the commentator.  They said that Honduras was not a good team playing from behind, and wasn't good at scoring.  Those were mentioned separately, but I think they're inextricably linked.  I think, to be a good team playing from behind, you must be very good offensively.

A little bit more controversy came in stoppage time, when Ecuador also had a goal disallowed, perhaps because of a handball call.  But not as big a deal as the earlier ones, as it affected the team already about to win.  On the replay, there was a handball, but it didn't seem at all deliberate, so a little bit weird.

Regardless, like mentioned, it didn't have any effect on the outcome, so not a big deal.

So yes, the final favored Ecuador, 2-1.  So Honduras will be going home, but certainly didn't look like they didn't belong in the tournament.