River and his glass jaw: Gallardo must reconstruct the image of a team that suffered a blow against Tigre

The blow of elimination to League Cup hit hard river. The defeat earlier tiger this was unexpected and exposed many issues to examine. And, most of all, an alert for what’s to come: the Copa Libertadores. That was in Núñez, after a difficult night like on Wednesday, There are many doubts about the future of Marcelo Gallardo’s team in the continental tournament.

While the Libertadores ’round of 16 classification is almost certain, the concern is for head-to-head duels. And there will be important group and individual conversations in the coming days. Certainly, less anger than those that took place at halftime against the Tigers, when revolutions were at a thousand per hour.

as far as he could tell Clarion, before returning to the field for the second half, in the locker room there were hot dialogues and blame between the players. After the meeting, Enzo Pérez openly admitted: “We gave 45 minutes, we weren’t like we should be.”.

The first analysis to come out at this point was that River has become a team — as they say in boxing the glass jaw. They hurt him and he had a hard time reacting. And he no longer understands aggressiveness to quickly hit and recover the ball, as he did at other moments. After all, he shows a certain profanity when the actions of the game don’t seem to favor him.

Thus, the scenes are set, on the one hand, to individual performance. There are ups and downs with experienced players and with the youngest as well; others who did not understand the dynamics of Gallardo’s game and some below their level. To make matters worse, it repeated the involuntary mistakes that gave goals to rivals. “We give so many goals, we can’t be that stupid “harshly said a squad member, who made self -criticism on Thursday morning and could not sleep.

Gallardo has already spoken at a press conference about that topic. “An involuntary error came again and from there it drove us. Sometimes, when we make a mistake on time and we are suffering and suffering goals, there is severe emotional shock. As much as you want to go out, you have to organize yourself. Sometimes you can and sometimes not enough ”, Muñeco admitted referring to Paulo Díaz’s mistake (he wanted to give a first-class pass to Enzo Pérez and give the ball to Facundo Colidio) in Tigre’s second goal, which he remembers . González Pirez’s mistakes against Platense and Boca.

The other focus is on the collective. And that’s where the responsibility of the coach comes in, whose approach has been surpassed several times by a rival, as happened Wednesday at the Monumental for Tigers. And so the instability River had during the semester was exposed. “We are discontinuous and irregular”identified the coach of Millionaire.

Gallardo was also unable to give him the leap in quality he sought to add to the squad in the transfer market. River made a huge investment (about 10 million dollars, approximately) and brought in seven players (Herrera, Gómez, González Pirez, Mammana, Pochettino, Quintero and Barco) who were added to a team that was just champion. And he recovered De La Cruz and Suarez. However, with the injuries of Cordovan striker and Juanfer Quintero, the coach could not find an answer on the substitute bench.. One proof is the delay in changes (Braian Romero and Santiago Simón, the first to enter, made it just 27 minutes into the second half) in the game on Wednesday.

It is that in return nothing much should change. On the bench with twelve players, half (five defenders and a brand-name central midfielder) are midfielders and have only one forward. The other four are midfield players, a place where Gallardo gathered players and some of them had similar characteristics. “They played the ball very well, but they made more foot passes than space and a lot of times the transitions weren’t fast. And when they didn’t, it was hard for them to activate fast pressure, so it was too late. the recovery, “a former River player commented in conversation with this newspaper. And he summed up:” Many are playing the same and the same. “

The bet didn’t pay off to play a lot of flyers. And the sides, which are very important to the procedure, did not provide solutions. With Rojas and Casco injured at half -speed, Andrés Herrera and Elías Gómez They still haven’t caught up with River’s dynamic.

To make matters worse, the attacker, who also had few alternatives, was outraged. Julián Álvarez has good games, though not “superman” as in late 2021. Suárez returned to high levels, but was injured. And Romero fell. Enzo Pérez also lowered his performance and the defense did not provide solidity. The team is fragile. And the Copa Libertadores does not forgive.