Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Sometimes you know something is going to happen.

Sometimes the stadium is alight with fireworks and heavy with sound and there has been a nasty buildup between two sides that went to battle the previous week and are about to go to battle again.

The soccer is vicious and there is ferocity everywhere, and the referee, while trying not to spoil the match, gives the impression that he is losing control.

All that is needed is a spark and the whole thing will ignite, blasting into chaos. Welcome to the finals of the 2012 Copa Sudaméricana.

In the 38th minute of Wednesday’s second leg of the Copa Sudaméricana finals between São Paulo and visiting Tigre of Argentina, the match exploded. Lucas Orbán elbowed São Paulo’s Lucas Moura in the face and an already combustible situation was set aflame, leaving only the debris of violence, disorder and madness. In the moments after the incident, with the blood still fresh on Lucas Moura’s cheek, the São Paulo captain Rogerio Ceni was booked for his fury, and Referee Enrique Osses of Chile battled to retain some element of control until the two teams collided near the tunnel after the halftime whistle.



Video: Copa Sudamericana final ends in controversy



São Paulo was leading, 2-0 (after a 0-0 draw in Buenos Aires the previous week). Lucas Moura, making his final appearance for São Paulo before joining Paris Saint-Germain in January, had opened the scoring with a composed finish after Willian José’s work down the right in the 22nd minute and, just six minutes later, beat the offside trap with a perfectly timed ball to Osvaldo, who deftly chipped Tigre goalkeeper Damian Albil for the insurance goal.

If this was supposed to be Lucas Moura’s night, the wing had risen to the occasion. His send-off at the Morumbi — one of the contributing factors to the boisterous atmosphere inside the stadium before kickoff — had been one of the two prematch narratives, the other the shameful treatment shown Tigre by their Brazilian hosts upon arrival in the country’s biggest city. São Paulo had refused to let the Argentines train at the Morumbi before the second leg and went so far as to have stadium security prevent the Tigre players from taking the field before the match.

Given the hostile reception, Tigre was ornery from the moment the first ball was kicked. Lucas Orbán, the left back, routinely took his frustrations out on Lucas Moura, and when the latter scored and assisted midway through the period, there was a feeling it was this matchup that would provide the inevitable spark.

Lucas Orbán had seemed to enjoy the head-to-head confrontation’s upper hand in the early exchanges, but with Lucas Moura intent on giving the home supporters something to remember in his final match at the Morumbi, his pace, smarts and trickery eventually swung the quarrel in his favor.

So Lucas Orbán bloodied his nose. In the aftermath the former River Plate graduate would claim Lucas Moura had been verbally insulting him, but given that spoken jibes are a common thing in soccer, never mind trivial compared to what happened next, his complaints are barely worth a mention. Although Lucas Moura made sure to remove his nose plugs and show his opponent the damage as the two sides headed for the tunnel at the end of the first half. He also stopped briefly to speak with a reporter.

“All they want to do it hit us,” he said. “The referee has no control over the game.”

Piervi Fonseca/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A sideline encounter in which the São Paulo substitute goalkeeper Denis seemed to figure heavily delayed the return to the dressing rooms, and when Osses was ready to start the second half after the break it was learned he had issued red cards to São Paulo’s Paulo Miranda and Tigre’s Gastón Diaz for their parts in the fracas, which had required police intervention to quell — at least temporarily.

Tigre never returned to the field for the second half. The São Paulo players tried to stay loose as they awaited the restart, but just as Osses revealed that Miranda and Diaz had been ejected, word of a serious incident in the Tigre dressing room began to filter through. Tigre’s official Twitter account provided the first picture, saying security staff had beaten several Tigre players and that the team was not going to contest the second half. Moments later Tigre Manager Néstor Gorosito announced that he intended to abandon the match.

“Security guards threatened my players with firearms,” Gorosito told Fox Deportes. “We decided to not play the second half. My players fought with the Paulista security guards for 15 minutes. Then the police came and the incident continued. Police beat Damian Albil and put a gun to his chest. What happened is a shame. The responsible party should be arrested.”

Exactly what happened in the Tigre locker room is still unclear, and further details will surely emerge as Conmebol — the South American governing — investigates. But both Lucas Orbán and Gorosito maintain at least two guns were pulled by stadium security, and both also assert one of the security guards pointed his gun at goalkeeper Damian Albil’s chest.

“There were 15 guys waiting to fight us in the locker room,” Gorosito said late Wednesday evening. “Several players were injured, although none seriously.”

Lucas Orbán told Fox: “The security guards were waiting here to kill us. They hit people with sticks, benches, everything.”

Not surprisingly, São Paulo was quick to diminish the gravity of the situation, with the club president Juvenal Juvencio saying, “Our biggest victory is the fact that the Argentines ran away.”

The São Paulo vice president Carlos Augusto told the Brazilian outlet Lance: “There is no proof to what they are saying. There is no way of placing responsibility on São Paulo for things that happened due to [Tigre’s] own actions and provocations. They are a team who did not honor the Argentine traditions and this is a way of trying to belittle our achievements. They have found a way to deface a wonderful victory.”

São Paulo was presented the Copa Sudaméricana trophy after Osses made the decision to end the match. The referee had presented Tigre an ultimatum to return to the field, and when it went unheeded he awarded the match, and the title by default, to São Paulo. It was perhaps curious that this conclusion was reached just as Conmebol announced it would be starting an investigation into what took place at the Morumbi, but the governing body was obviously keen to see the final end quickly.

And so the trophy presentation went forward, frenzied and excessive in its triumphalism. Still, there was room for a moment of honest emotion. As Ceni stood on the podium he motioned Lucas Moura to join him. He gave his teammate the captain’s armband and then presented the 20-year-old with the trophy to lift for the first time.

So ended Lucas Moura’s São Paulo career, and all the while Lucas Orbán was relaying his version of events to television crews who would shortly broadcast images of the blood-stained walls of the Tigre dressing room.

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter.