- The Argentine's long ball in the 38th minute of the second half against Independiente del Valle ended in Giorgian De Arrascaeta's scoring header.
- Champion of the 2025 edition and holder of Flamengo's record for minutes without conceding, Rossi meets Estudiantes again in the Semifinals, the opponent he eliminated with two penalty saves last year.
Goalkeepers do not show up in the assist statistics, except when something unusual happens. In the 38th minute of the second half of the second leg against Independiente del Valle, with Flamengo trailing 1-0 in the match –and leading 2-1 on aggregate– and down to ten men, Agustín Rossi launched a long pass from his box with the ball in play. It bounced, sailed over his counterpart Aldair Quintana, and Giorgian De Arrascaeta headed it in for the 1-1 that earned qualification for the Semifinals of the CONMEBOL Libertadores. According to Opta, it is the first assist by a goalkeeper in the knockout stages of the tournament since records began in 2013. Counting the group stage and the preliminary rounds, only eleven goalkeepers had provided an assist in that span; none on a knockout night.
The stat is a rarity, but the protagonist is not. Rossi joined Flamengo in July 2023, after a pre-contract announced in January of that year, on a deal through the end of 2027 and with the label of immediate backup to Santos. He arrived from Boca Juniors, where he had played since 2017, after earlier spells at Chacarita, where he came through the youth ranks, Estudiantes and Defensa y Justicia, and loans at Antofagasta and Lanús. At the Maracanã he quickly made the position his own, and since then he has built a career full of titles: the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Campeonato Carioca, the 2024 Copa do Brasil, the 2025 Supercopa do Brasil, the 2025 Brasileirão and, above all, the 2025 CONMEBOL Libertadores, the club's fourth.
That campaign had him as one of its pillars. Before the Final against Palmeiras, Rossi had kept eight clean sheets in twelve appearances, the best mark of any goalkeeper in the edition, and in Lima he closed out the title with another shutout in the 1-0 win. At the club he also holds the record for consecutive minutes without conceding, 1,029, and last October he became the second foreign goalkeeper to reach 100 matches in the 'Fla' shirt.
His specialty, until this Thursday, was penalties. Since 2018, Rossi has saved six in CONMEBOL Libertadores shootouts, and in that period only Sergio Romero, with seven, has more. Two of those saves came in the 2025 quarterfinal shootout against Estudiantes, when the tie had ended 2-2 and Flamengo advanced 4-2 from the spot on the road to 'La Gloria Eterna'.
The assist to the Uruguayan does not stem from a specialty, but it does from the best moment of his career. A long ball at the instant when Flamengo, a man down, needed to get to the other end quickly turned into a mark with no precedent. That it ended in a goal owes as much to reading the game as to fortune, but the record stands: in thirteen years of Opta data, no goalkeeper had created a goal in a knockout tie of the competition, and the first to do so did it in a match that decided a place among the final four.
What comes next has a familiar name. Flamengo will play the Semifinals against Estudiantes, the same opponent Rossi sent home from last year's edition with two penalty saves. A year later, the Argentine goalkeeper arrives at the rematch with a new credential, one that appeared on no team sheet until this Thursday night at the Maracanã.
