Copa de Verano: River Plate 2 – 0 Racing Club
By: Christian | January 19th, 2008
While Friday night’s 2-0 victory over Racing in Salta will go down in the record books as the first win under Diego Simeone, the scoreline won’t tell the whole story. Because to watch the game was to see a confused, ineffective, and unconvincing River get very, very lucky against a Racing side that frankly deserved better.
Again fielding a weakened squad, Simeone introduced a 3-3-3-1 formation, but no one on the field seemed too comfortable with their roles, and as a result River had an exceedingly poor first half, at times unable to hold possession or get the ball out of their own half of the field. Radamel Falcao was left alone during the first 45 minutes up top, and unable to do anything with the two or three poor crosses that came his way. Things picked up slightly in the second half with an obvious handball in the penalty area leading to the first goal converted by Paulo Ferrari and Marco Ruben securing the win minutes later, sending the mainly pro-River crowd home happy.
With two games into the pre-season, what have we learned about the new squad? It’s important not too get too ahead of ourselves; these are after all friendlies and it’s expected that the coach will field different players and try various formations. But a 3-3-3-1? Is this what Simeone actually wants to field to challenge for the title and the Copa? If last night’s performance was an indication, el Cholo may want to rethink his position. Next week will be the first unofficial Superclásico against Boca so you can expect to see an almost full strength squad, which may give us a better idea of the direction Simeone is taking the club.
On a side note, the best player of the night had to be Juan Ojeda, who managed the clean sheet and looked much more comfortable in front of goal, and his performance should help to quell some of the criticism he received last week.
Lineup:
Juan Ojeda
Danilo Gerlo, Emmanuel Martínez, Maximiliano Oliva
Paulo. Ferrari, Nicolás Domingo, Matías Abelairas
Diego Buonanotte, (Marcelo Burzac), Damián Lizio (Marco Ruben), Sebastián Sciorilli (Cristian Villagra);
Radamel Falcao
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