Reuters Soccer Blog

Velez Sarsfield’s claim to being Argentina’s sixth big club

By Rex Gowar in Buenos Aires

River Plate, Boca Juniors, Independiente, Racing Club and San Lorenzo are Argentina’s Big Five clubs.

Until Estudiantes became the first club outside the elite Five to win a league title in 1967, no other team had lifted the crown since in the professional era began in 1931.

Many clubs have won a league title since Estudiantes’ first success and Velez have become the most successful of these, winning their eighth crown at the weekend.

It puts them one ahead of Racing, who have won only one in the last 45 years.

One of the chief characteristics of the big teams is their derbies, the clasicos. The biggest is the Superclasico between River Plate and Boca Juniors, then comes the Avellaneda derby between Independiente and Racing whose two large stadiums are less than 300 metres apart.

San Lorenzo’s derby rivals are Huracan but Velez have long surpassed Huracan as a major force. Velez’s area rivals in the west of the capital are Ferro Carril Oeste, now in the second-tier Nacional B championship.

The unbearable lightness of being – or how a thin piece of synthetic cloth can become a lead weight

By Rex Gowar in Buenos Aires

Argentines often talk about how heavy a particular football shirt can be, River Plate’s, Boca Juniors’ or Argentina’s.

“La camiseta pesa” (the vest weighs (a lot).

This is what is happening to the players of River Plate, one of Argentina’s “Big Two”, who could be relegated for the first time this month.

The responsibility of being in charge of a squad that could go down to the Nacional B division is affecting coach JJ Lopez, who was a part of a great River team of the 1970s and early 1980s.

River were playing badly at home to Colon last Sunday so Lopez decided to bring off two midfielders and sent on two central strikers to add to the one he already had in the team.

It made matters worse because there was a gaping hole in midfield. River fell behind and only managed to equalise because they played “a los ponchazos”, like Indians waving their ponchos in air and charging forward without any organisation.

River Plate enraged more than ever by Boca defeat

It is hard to recall a time when River Plate have been more enraged by a defeat to their bitter enemies Boca Juniors than now.

Club president Daniel Passarella, a temperamental former River and Argentina captain and coach, exploded at the weekly Argentine Football Association board meeting chaired by AFA chief Julio Grondona.

Passarella claimed referee Patricio Loustau should have been suspended, which he has not been, for his poor performance in Sunday’s “Superclasico” which Boca won 2-0. He did not spot five penalties against River, Passarella told the sports daily Ole.

Grondona — who had the power to designate a good, experienced referee for the big derby – should resign, said Passarella.  Grondona dismissed it as the rant of a man whose team had lost.

Passarella has a point, though, corroborated by video replays of the match. Boca’s central defenders Matias Caruzzo and Juan Insaurralde should have been punished for fouls on River’s forwards as they sped through the middle into the box and for manhandling them at corners in the opening 20 minutes.

Neutral observers and Boca fans say the increasing blight of players grabbing each other at set pieces happens every weekend in Argentina. It does and referees should deal with it but Caruzzo was very guilty on Sunday. A good player with a potential international future who does not need to cheat, he is a serial offender at holding opponents’ shirts and pulling them down.

What has happened to River Plate is that the ghost of relegation has raised its ugly head again.

The River Plate yoyo

River Plate are playing two championships in one and until Sunday’s shock 2-0 home defeat by modest All Boys they had as good a chance of winning the Clausura title as they do now of relegation.

In the craziest of Argentine league championships, results are impossible to predict and playing away is an advantage. There have been 50 away wins and 41 at home so far in 13o Clausura matches this term.

River, with a record 33 Argentine league titles, began the 2010/11 season in August in trouble, worried about their low relegation points average which is measured over three seasons. They have never been relegated.

They slipped in and out of the bottom four places in the table of averages until a fourth place finish in the Apertura championship standings in the first half of the season kept their heads above water.

They have had a better Clausura and would have gone top if they had obtained the expected victory over All Boys, promoted last year, at the Monumental that their pedigree demanded.

Defeat, instead, has resurrected the spectre of relegation as other results helped conspire to edge them back down towards 17th place in the averages, which is one of two relegation playoff berths. The bottom two of the 20 teams are relegated automatically.

Worse still is that they are not favourites to win next Sunday’s “superclasico”, the big match against arch-rivals Boca Juniors at the Bombonera, even if their away form as a team built to defend and counter-attack, also a break with tradition, has been better. Their three defeats were at home.

Relegation in Argentina – is the system fair?

Olimpo, a modest team from the port city of Bahia Blanca on the windswept Atlantic coast in southern Buenos Aires province, are doing well in the Clausura championship. They are in fourth place three points behind leaders Velez Sarsfield.

Boca Juniors, one of the big clubs from the capital, are 14th — seven points off the pace.

Yet Olimpo, promoted this season, are in greater danger of relegation than Boca. Their fourth place in the table does not save them from also occupying one of the promotion playoff berths as a result of the three-season points averages.

The averages were introduced 28 years ago and although the move was not presented as such, it was designed as a safety net for a poor season by one of Argentina’s big clubs after San Lorenzo suffered a humiliating relegation in 1981, though it failed to save Racing Club in 1983, the first year of its implementation.

River Plate, third two points off the pace, began this season in the promotion playoff places and are now only just outside them with the constant fear of slipping back into them with a defeat.

The bottom two sides in the 20-team division go down automatically, those in 17th and 18th place meet teams from the second-tier Nacional B championship in two-legged playoffs.

River’s delicate position was due to a very poor 2008-09 season and failure to redress the balance enough the following season. They finished the Apertura championship in the first half of this season in fourth place and have been doing even better in the Clausura, edging away from danger — although playing pragmatic, defensive football a long way from their traditional, attractive attacking style.

No Riquelme free kick, no Boca victory

By Rex Gowar in Buenos Aires

Boca Juniors, in their modern crisis that goes back a couple of years, cannot string three wins together.

Fans might have thought after two wins on the trot that the worst was behind them.

But there wasn’t a free kick in a good position for Juan Roman Riquelme to exploit so they lost 2-0 at Lanus.

It seems safe to say now that there would not have been two successive Boca wins if Riquelme hadn’t scored from two free kicks in a row.

So the big debate in Buenos Aires is what is Julio Cesar Falcioni’s Boca without Riquelme scoring.

One answer is that Boca are “not playing at anything”. Another that they don’t have enough good players and the best are some way past 30.

Argentina’s big guns show signs of life

Boca Juniors have two aces in their pack, one now firing on all cylinders, the other in one of his worst slumps during his final season before retiring.

River Plate have a new ace at the lower end of the age scale who is growing in confidence, cheek and sheer skill.

Juan Roman Riquelme, 32, who featured in a UEFA free kick training video when he was at Villarreal, has scored brilliantly with two dead balls in Boca’s last two games, both victories, after his team’s poor start to the Clausura championship.

Martin Palermo, Boca’s 37-year-old all-time record goalscorer on the other hand, has gone 748 minutes without finding the net but understudy Lucas Viatri came on for him and scored the last-minute winner against Estudiantes on Sunday.

 Teenager Erik Lamela laid on a peach of a goal for right wing back Paulo Ferrari as River beat Quilmes 1-0 to go top equal with Estudiantes, ironically thanks to their arch-rivals Boca.

Perhaps the hierarchy in Argentine football is settling back into old accustomed positions. 

Racing Club and Independiente, classic rivals from the suburb of Avellaneda, want their say as Argentina’s traditional “Big Five”, including San Lorenzo, jostle for their places at the top.

Is a Riquelme or a Moreno essential to win the Argentine title?

Losing the player voted best of the Apertura championship in the first half of the season to an injury that will keep him out for the whole of the Clausura seemed to dash any hopes Racing Club had of the Argentine title.

As with Boca Juniors’ loss of Juan Roman Riquelme to injury in the Apertura, so Racing feared the worst when Colombian Giovanni Moreno damaged knee ligaments in their opening match.

Worse still, Racing lost at home to Boca in their second match – the Boca side that with a not fully fit Riquelme in midfield had lost their opener by a crushing 4-1 scoreline at home to Godoy Cruz.

Who are Godoy Cruz? This modest team from Mendoza way to the west in the Andean foothills making a creditable debut in the Libertadores Cup (South America’s champions league) may not win the Clausura but they are making a good job of being major arbiters of the outcome.

They lose at home but cause trouble away, following up their victory over Boca last month with a 1-0 away win against title holders Estudiantes last weekend.

Meanwhile, Racing are making light of the loss of Moreno thanks partly to the goalscoring instincts of his fellow Colombian Teofilo Gutierrez.

They have won three matches in a row scoring 10 goals, half of them by new signing Gutierrez, and went top at the weekend with a 4-0 rout of Colon away at the Elephants’ Graveyard in Santa Fe – a name more apt for the home team than the visitors this time.

Boca crossroads more of a roundabout

Boca Juniors can’t escape the spotlight after another defeat, 1-0 at Velez Sarsfield on Sunday.

The big question surrounding coach Julio Cesar Falcioni’s team is whether he should continue to pick striker Martin Palermo when he can only count on one half of a brilliant, but aging double act that helped Boca win a string of trophies.

Juan Roman Riquelme, out of the last three matches after the 4-1 home defeat by Godoy Cruz on the opening weekend of the Clausura championship in mid-February, is nursing a knee problem.

Until he gets rid of some water on that knee he will not be included again in the squad for training.

Palermo, Boca’s all-time record goalscorer, has yet to find the net after four matches of the championship. Worse still, he has hardly had a chance because the team don’t play to him as they do with Riquelme pulling the strings.

Lucas Viatri, Palermo’s natural understudy, has been more incisive in his brief outings as a substitute and media are speculating Falcioni may have to drop Palermo, although Viatri is nursing an injury.

Boca were crowned South American champions four times in the first decade of the new millennium with the Riquelme-Palermo duet a key element in their success.

“Nothing here and nothing there”

Rex Gowar in Argentina on how Boca’s fans turned on their team.

Bewildered Boca Juniors, their promising wins in mid-season friendlies a distant memory, are grappling with tactics that led to fans turning against them during Saturday’s 0-0 draw at home to modest All Boys.

Chants of “Riquelme, Riquelme” rang down from the stands in the packed Bombonera during Saturday’s miserable performance from fans who had welcomed the appointment as coach last month of Julio Cesar Falcioni.

Their gripe is not yet with Falcioni’s overall work — he has not been there for more than a few weeks — but with his omission of playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme on Saturday for tactical reasons that blew up in his face.

“The functioning of a team depends on the ball and the ball on the players. Boca, with these players, with this team, never knew what to do with the ball,” wrote former Boca, Tenerife and Argentina midfielder Diego Latorre in a column in the sports daily Ole.

Boca, Argentina’s most popular club, thought they had overcome the difficulties of the Apertura championship under coach Claudio Borghi in the first half of the season.