Club World Cup team guide – River Plate: An illustrious history and a future South American star

New York Times

5 hours ago

The inaugural Club World Cup starts in the United States on June 14, with its 32 teams split into eight groups of four in the opening phase.
As part of our guides to the sides that will feature in the tournament, James Horncastle gives you the background on River Plate.
Follow the Club World Cup on The Athletic this summer…
El Mas Grande ('the greatest'), this club from Buenos Aires need little introduction. The 38-time Argentine league champions also boast one of the most talked-about young stars in South American football (more on Franco Mastantuono later).
River should be very good after spending more than €50million (£42.2m; $57m) in the transfer window. That's a huge amount for Argentine football. The funds were raised by selling players to Russian teams, as Spartak Moscow and CSKA Moscow signed a trio of River old boys. It took a while for head coach Marcelo Gallardo to integrate all the acquisitions — River essentially bought a new team — but German Pezzella, Lucas Martinez Quarta and Sebastian Driussi were all returning, too, after leaving clubs in Europe.
Advertisement
Gallardo's latest vintage finished strongly in the first half of the season (the Apertura), and rather satisfyingly threw Boca into crisis by beating them in the 'Superclasico' — a defeat that cost rival coach Fernando Gago his job. Unexpectedly, River then lost on penalties in the play-offs to Platense, who shocked everyone and won a top league title for the first time in their history.
Unlike the Brazilian teams who qualified as recent winners of the Copa Libertadores, South America's Champions League equivalent, River booked their place based on their ranking over the last four years in continental competitions. They were the top-ranked eligible CONMEBOL (South American) team and sealed their place by beating Libertad 2-0 in last season's Copa Libertadores group stages with a brace from Miguel Borja, their experienced Colombian striker.
River have a tradition of playing slick football going back to La Maquina, the legendary side of the late '30s and early '40s, which nudged South American football forward.
Renato Cesarini and Carlos Peucelle, the most consequential coaches in River's history until Gallardo, used to say: 'What's the ball made of? Leather. And where does leather come from? Cows. And what do cows eat? Grass.' The ball has to eat grass. In other words, it has to move. Gallardo knows this better than anyone, but he is also a pragmatist who has always adapted his system to the players available and the opponent River are facing.
Gallardo is only 49 and yet there is a towering bronze statue of him outside River's Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires. It shows him holding aloft the Copa Libertadores, a trophy he won as a player with River Plate in 1996 and then as a coach in 2015 and 2018.
Known as the Muneco ('doll'), the baby-faced Gallardo is the most successful manager in River's illustrious history. This is his second spell as manager after Al Ittihad briefly lured him away to work in the Saudi Pro League. The statue that River unveiled of him raised eyebrows because it seemed Gallardo had stuffed another Libertadores trophy in his trouser pocket.
'Alisson? No! Franco Armani.' He is 38 and, let's be honest, isn't as good as Alisson in goal. But River's veteran goalkeeper has been caught up in too many legendary moments to count. He won his first Libertadores with Atletico Nacional in Colombia, married a Colombian and could have played for Colombia. Then Armani returned to Argentina, played another couple of Libertadores finals, winning one with River. He was a member of Argentina's World Cup-winning squad in Qatar in 2022 and helped advise Emiliano Martinez in the shootouts that decided the quarter-final and final.
Daniele Adani, the former Inter centre-back turned pundit, who became a River fan because of his former team-mate Matias Almeyda, once said: 'Armani isn't the best goalkeeper in football, he's the best in humanity.' This is all an exaggeration.
River continue to have arguably the best academy in Argentina and their latest graduate is the most talked about talent in South America. Franco Mastantuono made his debut for the national team in early June. He does not turn 18 until August yet his appearance for Argentina somehow felt overdue.
A playmaker who operates from the right, Mastantuono finished the first half of the season in remarkable form, scoring and assisting seven times in his last nine club appearances in all competitions. The crowning moment was his incredible Superclasico-winning free kick against Boca in April, which flicked the hype machine into overdrive.
There are so many to choose from. One is about a tarot card reader who tells a River fan to give up smoking weed and the booze, otherwise they'll go to the grave. She throws her cards and decrees River will be champions, their rivals in the mud, and frankly, that's all that matters.
That would be Boca Juniors. It is South America's fiercest rivalry.
Both clubs were founded in the same working-class neighbourhood, known as the mouth of Buenos Aires. Boca took its name and stayed. River moved around instead. They were social climbers, pitching up in Caballito, Palermo and Recoleta before settling down in well-to-do Nunez. This led River to be nicknamed the Millionaires. Their stadium, the Monumental, has a capacity of over 85,000, significantly larger than Boca's Bombonera, which holds 57,200. One of the huge stands of the Monumental was bankrolled by the transformational transfer fee Juventus paid for forward Omar Sivori in 1957.
There are a couple of recent animating elements to this rivalry. Boca, for instance, revelled in River's relegation in 2011. River then got their own back by beating Boca in the 2018 Libertadores final.
Boca's stadium is known as the 'chocolate box'. It is a bowl-shaped stadium except for one stand, which is square. The lore says that the houses behind that stand are owned by generations of River fans who refuse to sell up, stopping Boca from completing the curved look of the Estadio Alberto J Armando, known more colloquially as La Bombonera.
Because River are El Mas Grande. The greatest.
(All kicks-offs ET/BST)
(Top photos: Rodrigo Valle/ Eurasia Sport Image/Getty; design: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic)