Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Copa Libertadores - The season is starting again (July 18th)

A few days before the start of the World Cup, RIVER PLATE faced LIBERTAD (Paraguay) in the first leg of the Copa Libertadores' Quarterfinals.

Tonight, after more than a month, they will meet again and they'll try and book a place into the semifinals.

That 2-2 result in Buenos Aires seems to be pre-historic! Nobody remember who scored or who played that night!

That's football in this part of the World. The International calendar should be simply called: European calendar.

For those who don't know, the Copa Libertadores is the Southamerican equivalent of the Champions League. But unfortunatelly, it lacks on interest and number of sponsor in an incredible way. It used to be much more prestigious than what it is today. All those classic encounters between top teams from Argentina, Brazil or Uruguay seem to be in the past and those teams are missing some of their historic identity, but still, every team in South America would kill to win it!

This little article comes as an introduction for those of you who never heard of it and also as a place for those who are really interested in it to discuss and exchange your opinions through your comments.

Any RIVER PLATE fans around?

Anybody watching the game tonight?

I've got to go to the theatre tonight. So I'll be missing the match (which will be on TV). I'll look forward to talk about it with you anyway.

11 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:49 pm

    I'm following the game on Gamecast...seems painful so far.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:08 pm

    Hi, is Gamecast a live video transmission. Sorry, a bit ignorant here. But will surely like to watch an Argentine club game?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well...it's been horrible for RIVER PLATE tonight.

    3-1 down and a real scandal after the match (between RIVER fans and the Paraguayan police).

    It's such a shame but it comes as no surprise as RIVER are not going through a happy spell and they had troubles with the number of available players. I believe they had just 15 players ready to play! That's not enough.

    Will comment more on this tomorrow (that is Wednesday 19th).

    Thanks for being here!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous11:37 pm

    Well argentinian club fans are again presented to the world as a bunch of mindless thugs thanks to these recent antics after a loss. Bad result and Bad press sounds like River plate alrite

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous11:46 am

    Gamecast isn't a live video transmission unfortunately. It's a log of what happens during the game and gets updated every two minutes or so. Very basic, not nearly as entertaining as the min by min on the Guardian website (though they don't write them for Copa Libertadores, just the World Cup and Championships League) Sigh, I need to save up for Fox Soccer Channel because it's the same reading about what is happening as it is watching what is happening. Then again every says that River played like crap and being a mild River fan I feel it's best I didn't see that...

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  6. Anonymous1:48 pm

    This is a terrible result for River, especially after beating Corinthians in the last round. I can't believe the club sold Rolfi Montenegro and Santana before the game. Considering how many star players River have sold over the past 5 years it's not surprising we're still waiting for another Libertadores. Where does all the money go?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good question, Ian.

    I can't count how many talented and expensive players have RIVER PLATE sold in the last decade (being product of their youth system or not).

    Let's try:

    Pablo AIMAR
    Javier SAVIOLA
    Marcelo GALLARDO
    Maxi LOPEZ
    Roberto AYALA
    Julio CRUZ

    I'm sure you can help me with this list.

    The point is...where does the money go?

    Granted they buy the new talents from other argentine clubs and their team salaries are huge (the highest in Argentina).

    But they shouldn't be struggling to field 11 first class starters (plus a few substitutes).

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous8:11 am

    Javier Mascherano and Hernan Crespo are two other former River Plate players

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous9:17 pm

    no argentinian teams in the last four of the copa.
    I wonder whens the last time that happened

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yes, and on top of MASCHERANO and CRESPO I forgot about Fernando CAVENAGHI (ridiculously playing in the Russian league!).

    No argentinian teams in the Copa Libertadores semis...that's sad.

    I'll see tomorrow (Friday) if I can find some facts about that and when was the last time it happened.

    Now it's 3 AM and I'm off to bed!

    ReplyDelete
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