River 1-0 Boca: nastiness, gridlock and fight

     There's simply far too much at stake in any River-Boca that those always result in nasty fights, midfield gridlock and packed defenses. These are derbies so actually impassioned on and off the pitch that it doesn't matter whether they are playing friendly summer tournaments in Mendoza or Mar del Plata, the Argentine league for mere three points, or Copa Libertadores's elimination stages: nasty fights, midfield gridlock and packed defenses always prevail.

In truth, in terms of decision-making, the ball was on River's pitch. After their lackluster group stage and their 2-0 defeat to Boca in La Bombonera at the domestic competition days ago, River Plate might have felt that the midfield diamond formation that proved effective at dismantling Boca Juniors to lift Copa Sudamericana last semester was all quite well known to play it again. The diamond used to allow River boss Marcelo Gallardo to attack with five men including the likes of Teo Gutiérrez, Rodrigo Mora, Leo Pisculichi, Carlos Sánchez and Ariel Rojas and produce some spells of beautiful combination football, but it came at expense of being narrow and having the full-backs been told not to motor forward at all.

Therefore, Gallardo reverted to a plain 4-4-2 in which gifted playmaker Pisculichi was dropped to the bench and pure destroyers Leo Ponzio and Matías Kranevitter formed the holding midfield duo. As consequence, River reinforced their flanks and were less vulnerable to quick Boca transitions, but now they were attacking with only four or maybe three individuals (Teo, Mora and Sánchez). The full-backs, as it remains a constant in Gallardo's tenure, were stationed along the centre-backs.

The Boca boss Rodolfo Arruabarrena took somehow more peculiar choices. In his 4-3-3 system, Uruguayan number ten Nicolás Lodeiro is nominally deployed on one of the wings and the other goes for more traditional wingers such as Federico Carrizo and Cristian Pavón. This makes the actual formation to resemble more a 4-4-2 with the traditional winger tracking back and Lodeiro becoming a satellite forward behind a classic target man (surprisingly, Jonathan Calleri won the number nine spot against Pablo Osvaldo). The main shortcoming of a 4-3-3 switching ambiguously into a 4-4-2 is that the midfield components need time to settle in different roles at expense of a clear structure.

Fernando Gago, in this way, endured a tough night misplacing balls under pressure from Ponzio and Kranevitter and could not spray passes sideways either as River's settled 4-4-2 protected the flanks well with Sánchez and Driussi. Lodeiro dropped between the lines but Funes Mori was more than happy coming up to dispossess him with legal (and illegal) tackles. Calleri showed little mobility. It's then fair to say that River Plate thoroughly cancelled all potential Boca threats locking both sides into midfield stalemate.

             

Apart from his preference to always keep full-backs in defensive positions, Gallardo seems faithful to the forward partnership of Teo Gutiérrez and Rodrigo Mora because neither is a classic target man and, having really decent technical skills, both can drop and work the channels well. This provides River with the attacking width lost by their stationed full-backs and poises dillemmas onto Boca's four-man defensive line: should their full-backs motor forward and leave the centre-backs exposed to one-on-one situations with Teo and Mora? or should they be stationed themselves? Both situations happened and it was extraordinary to see Teo Gutiérrez dragging Cata Díaz out of position and winning a great deal of corner kicks for River (which weren't used efficiently as Pisculichi was on the bench). When Arruabarrena realized the danger posed by Teo's mobility, he instructed his full-backs to stay on line and the match got into more gridlock.

One should credit Marcelo Gallardo for making offensive subs taking Ponzio off and bringing in attacker Gonzalo Martínez on the left wing and placing Carlos Sánchez along Kranevitter. Martínez tried to drive past Leandro Marín within the box and the Boca full-back pulled him down for the penalty kick converted by Sánchez. Minutes later, Teo Gutiérrez was sent off and River Plate will sorely miss his best man in the second leg at La Bombonera.

In all, this was a nasty fight gridlocked in the midfield in which River Plate seemed more comfortable than Boca Juniors. Gallardo appear to have more tactical alternatives than Arruabarrena and this looks like River's long awaited vendetta for that cruel elimination to Boca in penalty shootouts in Libertadores 2004.