- No Uruguayan team has ever played in a CONMEBOL Sudamericana Final. If they get past Atlético Mineiro, the 'Ciudadano' will be the first.
- Unbeaten against Brazilian sides, without a home defeat in the history of the competition and with five players who have featured in almost every minute of the campaign, Marcelo Méndez's team arrive in Belo Horizonte with plenty of arguments.
There is a door in the CONMEBOL Sudamericana that no Uruguayan club has opened in its entire history: the one to the Final. None of the country's teams has ever gone beyond the Semifinals. This century, the only Uruguayan team to play in a continental final was Peñarol, in the 2011 CONMEBOL Libertadores against Santos. And the club now two matches away from changing that story is not one of the traditional powers of Uruguayan football: it is Montevideo City Torque, a 19-year-old club playing in the CONMEBOL Sudamericana for the second time, who visit Atlético Mineiro, the reigning runners-up, on Wednesday in the first leg of the Semifinals.
The first time was in 2021, when they failed to get out of the Group Stage. The second began last March with a 1-0 win over Defensor Sporting in the Preliminary Stage and has not stopped since: they topped a group shared with Grêmio, Palestino and Deportivo Riestra, with 13 points and 11 goals; beat Tigre 1-0 in Victoria and 2-1 in Montevideo in the Round of 16, the club's first away win against an Argentine side in CONMEBOL competitions; and came back against Cienciano in the Quarterfinals, from 0-2 in Cusco to a 3-0 win at the Estadio Centenario, with two goals from Salomón Rodríguez and one from Nahuel Da Silva.
Marcelo Méndez's team can be explained by the consistency of a handful of names. According to Opta, five players have featured in at least 983 of the campaign's 990 minutes: goalkeeper Franco Torgnascioli and full-back Facundo Silvera have played all 990, Gary Kagelmacher and Salomón Rodríguez 989 and Eduardo Agüero 983. Esteban Obregón, with 965, is close behind the top five. It is a six-man core that repeats match after match and holds up a team that came into the competition with a different goal in mind: 'We got tired of hearing it: Torque play nice football but don't win. Far from changing, we reaffirmed our path', Méndez said in May, when the team had just qualified for the Round of 16.
The path has names. Salomón Rodríguez is the top scorer of the CONMEBOL Sudamericana 2026 with seven goals, and Opta puts the figure in perspective: only 13 players have exceeded that number in a single edition of the competition, and the only one to do so with a Uruguayan team was Agustín Álvarez Martínez, with ten for Peñarol in 2021. Torgnascioli, 36, is the goalkeeper with the most claimed crosses in this edition, with 12, and has made 36 saves; Kagelmacher, the 38-year-old captain, is the leading figure in a dressing room that, in the words of Franco Pizzichillo, the player with the most appearances in the club's history, has 'an outstanding captain'.
The tournament's numbers describe a team that knows how to manage a lead. Torque have the highest average of minutes in the lead per match since the start of the Group Stage, with 46.5, and have trailed in only two of their 11 matches, both away: 62 minutes against Riestra and 74 against Cienciano. When they go ahead, they give up the ball, with 43.1% possession, and lean on what they do best: set pieces, with seven of their 18 goals, and direct attacks, with four goals compared with none from long sequences. They have scored 18 goals from 9.5 expected, the biggest difference in the edition, and at home their 2026 record is perfect: six matches, six wins. In the history of the competition, in fact, they have yet to lose at home, with seven wins and three draws in ten matches.
Their record against Brazilian sides also backs them: they are unbeaten against teams from that country in CONMEBOL competitions, with two wins and two draws, and are one of only four teams to have played at least four matches against Brazilian opposition without losing, alongside Águilas Doradas, Ferro Carril Oeste and Independiente Rivadavia. In this very edition, they beat Grêmio 1-0 in Montevideo and drew 2-2 in Porto Alegre.
Across the way, however, stands one of the strongest home sides on the continent. Atlético Mineiro have won 15 of their last 18 home matches in CONMEBOL competitions, with two draws and one defeat, and beat both Uruguayan visitors they hosted in that span: 3-2 against Peñarol in the 2024 CONMEBOL Libertadores and 2-1 against Juventud de Las Piedras in this edition. The 'Galo', finalists in the 2024 CONMEBOL Libertadores and the 2025 CONMEBOL Sudamericana, are playing in the semifinals of a continental tournament for the third year in a row and will try to become the second team to reach consecutive Finals of the competition, something only Boca have achieved, in 2004 and 2005.
The Final is on November 21 in Barranquilla, far from Montevideo, but the door opens earlier: at the Arena MRV on Wednesday and at the Centenario a week later. 'For a coach, seeing your players give everything is the most rewarding thing there is', Méndez said after the comeback against Cienciano. For a country, seeing an 18-year-old club reach a place none of its own has ever reached would be something more.
