With almost three years of delay, Banfield and River will play this Wednesday a valid semifinal for the 2020 Champions Trophy. The winner of this unusual match, which will begin at 9:00 p.m. at the Mario Kempes stadium in Córdoba and will be televised by ESPN Premium and TNT Sports, will face Boca to define a title that was vacant that year due to the coronavirus epidemic. If after ninety minutes there is a tie, the match will be defined by kicks from the penalty mark. There will be no extension.
As Boca won the two official competitions of 2020 (the 2019/2020 First Division Championship and then the Diego Maradona Cup in January 2021), AFA arranged for River as runner-up in the championship and Banfield as runner-up in the Cup to be eliminated in a single match to determine the finalist. Everything is so forced that this hypothetical definition still has no place or date of realization. Although it will try to play it in some space that leaves the programming of the first semester of the year.
River arrives driven by their 1-0 victory over Tigre on Saturday and the match will be the first one-on-one for Martín Demichelis as coach with a very strong symbolic weight since in this type of matches, Marcelo Gallardo’s cycle was very effective, accessing 17 final games in the almost 9 years of management. If they beat Banfield, River will play a new final against Bocaa team that he eliminated five times in that same cycle and with whom he lost the last two on penalties.
As for training, if there are no last-minute inconveniences, lThe coach’s idea is to keep the same team that won in Victoria with the return of Jonathan Maidana instead of Leandro González Pirez. In any case, Demichelis will confirm the starting lineup in Córdoba after the technical talk that will take place at the concentration.
For his part, Banfield comes from losing 2-0 against Newell’s in Rosario in a game in which the player could not take advantage of more and wasted several goal chances to get at least a draw. Javier Sanguinetti’s team still couldn’t win in the tournament since after a goalless draw against Unión at home, they fell 3-2 on their visit to Huracán and then returned to equalize 0-0 on their home field against Gimnasia La Plata.
“You are never a favorite when you play against River, it is a reality unless you have a superlative level. We are not going to see what happens, we have the illusion of being able to achieve a result and play another final,” Sanguinetti declared in the last hours. In principle, the coach will bet on the entry of the youthful Alan Di Pippawho could run to the central zone, Eric Remedi would enter the middle zone and Alejandro Piedrahita and Milton Giménez would be in the attack from the beginning.