This is how River faces the most demanding week of the year: on Tuesday they face the “best of Brazil” and on Sunday they have the Superclásico

River travel to Rio de Janeiro with head focused Libertadores Cupbut with a side look on the Super classic. It is that after having faced Fluminense, the duel against Boca for the Professional League will arrive. AND Martin Demichelis wants to be in all the details.

After the draw against Atlético Tucumán, which allowed River to keep the lead over San Lorenzo, as Ciclón also equalized with Vélez, Millionaire’s coaching staff is aiming all guns at the week’s biggest fight from the beginning of the Demichelis era. Is that Núñez’s team will face the toughest team in their group in the Libertadores and five days later will receive the eternal rival, in what will be Micho’s first Superclásico as coach.

For the confrontation against Fluminense, River will once again have their starting point after Demichelis took advantage of the trip to Tucumán not only to rest the gala team but also to observe the performance of some players who had no minutes continuously, like Robert Rojas, Elías Gómez, Santiago Simón, Pablo Solari, Miguel Borja and Salomón Rondón.

So, without being able to have Paulo Díaz (recovering from a left hamstring strain) and Enzo Díaz (was sent off against Sporting Cristal), regular starters, Demichelis will rebuild team with most players usually coming off the bat. While Emanuel Mammana would play for the Chilean and Andrés Herrera would join the former Talleres, so Milton Casco would play at left-back.

This way, would be the possible team to play against Fluminense: Franco Armani; Herrera, Leandro González Pirez, Mammana, Casco; Enzo Perez, Aliendro; Nacho Fernández, Esequiel Barco, Nicolás De La Cruz; Luca Beltran. From there will also come the base to face Boca on Sunday.

“He’s the best rival in the group and, dare I say, also in Brazil at the moment”, Demichelis said of Fluminense. And the River coach has plenty of reasons: Flu is the leader of group D in the Cup and until Saturday (the day they lost 4-2 against Fortaleza with a team full of substitutes) he had a streak of seven wins in a row between all competitions.

The carioca team has a great coach like Fernando Diniz (Already faced River in Libertadores 2020 with San Pablo) proclaiming the good game and – without departing from modern methodologies – a regression to primitive Brazilian football. With him Flu has already won two titles (the Taça Guanabara and the Carioca). And on the campus of him he has figures like, Felipe Melo, Gans, Marcelo (drag an injury) e Argentine striker Germán Canowho has played there since the start of 2022 and has scored 64 goals in 89 games (average 0.72 per game).

Furthermore, the eternal rival of Flamengo has two incentives. One is his goal power, as he currently averages 2.3 goals per game. And the other is playing in the legendary Maracaná, a stadium that River has visited six times (this will be the seventh), of which three lost, two won and once drawn. Precisely, that tie (1 to 1) was against Fluminense, in the Libertadores 2021. The other matches had been against Flamengo.

River has been training for the past two days at his property in Ezeiza, where he has mostly done tactical and ball work. The team travels this Monday afternoon (at 16:15 departs from Ezeiza airport) to Rio de Janeiro, where they expect to arrive after 19:00.

And the delegation will be staying at the Sheraton Grand Río in Leblon. Among its members there will also be a fan who will share the experience of living away with the team, after winning a lottery organized by Codere, River’s main sponsor.

But that is already behind us. Now, the story is different. And in his coaching facet, he will be looking to find his first Libertadores guest win as River coach in Rio.