The Colombian Juan Fernando Quintero He arrived in the country this Thursday on a private flight and this Friday, River’s doctor, Pedro Hamsik, will undergo a medical check-up at a clinic in the Belgrano neighborhood to find out the degree of the injury he suffered in the internal collateral ligament of his left knee and that prevented him from completing the friendly match that his country’s team played last Sunday against Honduras.
At first, Quintero must remain inactive for 10 days with which only in the middle of next week will he be able to join the practices that the River squad has been carrying out in Ezeiza under the orders of his technician Marcelo Gallardo. That delay will take away from the Colombian lefty the chances of playing from the start the first three games for the League Cup that River will face against Unión de Santa Fe, Patronato and Newell’s. This season Quintero will wear the historic jersey number 10 instead of his compatriot Jorge Carrascal.
“I am very happy and grateful for all this that I am experiencing and I also thank Gallardo for his interest. I can’t wait to train with my new teammates. We all know what happened, but I live day to day and now it is a new challenge. We have to start from scratch. We already know what River represents, “said Quintero in a brief contact with journalists at the exit of the Aeroparque in the city of Buenos Aires.
This Friday too River will have its first formal soccer rehearsal in a friendly with Independiente, which will be played behind closed doors on the Ezeiza campus as part of the preseason. After the refusal to participate in the tournament in Maldonado, Uruguay, due to possible Covid-19 infections, Gallardo requested to have at least three preparatory matches and the first will be against the team now led by Eduardo DomÃnguez.
After the preseason in San MartÃn de los Andes, the squad returned to work in Ezeiza with a physical routine in which Carlos Auzqui, Cristian Ferreira and Franco Petroli also participated, absent from the work carried out in the province of Neuquén. The three will work with the top squad, although Auzqui will do so until he arranges his loan to Vélez or his sale to Cruzeiro in Brazil.
Different is the situation Benjamin Rollheiser and Fabrizio Angileri, who will continue working without joining the squad due to the lack of agreement to renew their respective contracts which ends on June 30. The club’s position remains firm and both players will not be taken into account by Gallardo until they fix their relationship with the institution.
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