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River Plate still making waves outside top flight
By Rex Gowar
River Plate were relegated, they play in the B Nacional championship, their profile has sunk: Right, right, wrong.
As Argentine Football Association chief Julio Grondona put it, River are not adapting to the second division, the B Nacional is adapting to River.
The record 33-times first division champions still command front page headlines on a par with arch-rivals Boca Juniors – during a season in which the biggest club match in the country, the “Superclasico” is missing from the fixture list.
It has been five years since away fans were banned in the second tier of the game in Argentina, principally for security reasons.
Now the Argentine Football Association has lifted the ban. This is because the rest of the B Nacional want to cash in on having River as opponents, especially in home games.
It started at the weekend when Daniel Vila, the politically-ambitious president of Independiente Rivadavia, a team based in the Andean province of Mendoza, encouraged River fans to go to their home game against the giants from Buenos Aires.
Velez Sarsfield’s claim to being Argentina’s sixth big club
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.
Hi..I am from Argentina…To be a 6th big Team in Argentina is an endless discussion 
… Let me explain an approach. The five big team you mention reached that name by tradition and mainly Championships and number of fans. Those team won all Argentina Championships since the professional era in 1931 until Estudiantes won it in 1967, as you mentioned (and also Estudiantes won the Libertadores Cup in 1968, 1969, 1970 and 2009 and the Intercontinental Cup in 1968). Since that moment, started the discussion for the 6th big team in Argentina, mainly among Estudiantes by showing your National & International Titles and Huracan, by showing your number of fans and its “Derby” against the classic rival San Lorenzo. In last 20 years, Velez was added to the 6th big discussion by winning several local & international championships but with less fans that Estudiantes/Huracan. Depending on the parameters (fan population and/or Titles) you could have the 6th Team
The unbearable lightness of being – or how a thin piece of synthetic cloth can become a lead weight
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.
Clash of egos at River Plate
River Plate’s former goalkeeping great Ubaldo Fillol, a World Cup-winner with Argentina in 1978, has resigned as their first-team keeping coach after what he felt as a lack of respect shown by Juan Pablo Carrizo on Sunday.
Carrizo brushed Fillol aside when the older man tried to console him as he left the pitch with jeers ringing in his ears after a blunder that allowed San Lorenzo to equalise for a 1-1 draw that left River in the relegation zone.
“I felt humiliation and shame… I don’t forgive this kind of attitude,” Fillol, who felt slighted in public, said in a statement on his personal website (www.ubaldofillol.com).
It was the second dire weekend for Carrizo, who was at least partially to blame for both goals in River’s 2-0 defeat away to Boca Juniors in the “superclasico” the previous weekend.
This is the same goalkeeper who has been responsible for a good deal of the points River have picked up this season with excellent performances that earned him an Argentina recall.
It is the way Carrizo reacts to his own mistakes that has the River faithful, a good half of whom jeered him on Sunday, worried that his pride and arrogance get the better of him.
After letting a tentative long-range shot slip from his grasp into the net near the end of the match, Carrizo almost compounded his error by trying to dribble a back pass away from an opponent when he should have played safe by booting it upfield and was lucky not to concede a second goal.
Fillol has such a sensitive ego – that didn’t help River at all – what a big baby.
http://www.manchesterunited2011.com
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.
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.
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.
How did Argentine football get in such a state?
Lionel Messi walks off the pitch in Asuncion his head bowed after Argentina’s 1-0 defeat to Paraguay. A few days later he scores for Barcelona and the dimpled grin is back on his face.
Diego Maradona says that on the compact Rosario central pitch Argentina will pin Brazil against their goal. They do up to a point, with masses of possession, but Dunga’s men demolish them in lethal counter-attacks with Maradona watching in glum silence and Argentina return to River Plate for next month’s key World Cup qualifier against Peru.
“Coco” Basile is all grins, throaty one-liners and “I know the dressing room inside out” at his official presentation as Boca Juniors coach on July 1. Last weekend it was his empty look the cameras caught as he walked off the Bombonera pitch after another defeat.
Nestor Gorosito welcomes the three musketeers Ariel Ortega, Marcelo Gallardo and Matias Almeyda at the start of a new campaign last month. Last week he went sprawling in the mud on the side of the pitch when a Lanus player slid into him in pouring rain during a 1-0 defeat that put River Plate out of the Copa Sudamericana, and the crowd cheered.
Argentina’s big teams, the national side that have won two World Cups and the multi-decorated Boca Juniors and River Plate, are not well and fans and media are struggling to understand why.
Former Argentina captain Roberto Ayala said recently in Spain he saw a “surprising lack of rebellion” in Argentina’s players against their situation as Maradona’s side hovered dangerously close to World Cup elimination.
The coaches may not have the answers but players who week in, week out make the European headlines for their clubs, the likes of Messi, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Diego Milito, are failing to deliver for Argentina.
They will Make it through, common, its Argentina!http://www.soccerfanatic.com
Do not forget to mention a small detail… just this last week the four leaders (including two brothers)of River Plate’s ‘barra’ (known as ‘the drunks from the stands’) were convicted of firing their weapons on a group of rivals, killing two and injuring two. Aside their cuteness as second division dwellers, they are still fourth division over privileged rich kids with a sense of entitlement that embarrasses most self-respecting Argentines.