RIVER AND BOCA TO ‘GIVE LIVES’ IN QUEST FOR LIBERTADORES GLORY
The eyes of the world may be focusing on leaders such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Argentina this weekend, but the heart of Buenos Aires will be beating to a very different football drum.
River Plate and Boca Juniors, by far the two most popular football clubs not just in the Argentine capital but also the whole country, will clash in the second leg of the Copa Libertadores final in what has been branded a “superclasico”.
Honours are even from the first leg two weeks after River twice hit back from a goal down to draw 2-2 at Boca’s iconic Bombonera stadium.
And so it is to the Monumental, home of the “millionaires” for the deciding tie, the first time two Argentine sides have faced off in the final of the continent’s premier club competition: the equivalent of Europe’s Champions League.
And there can be no downplaying the importance of this clash.
“We’re going to give our lives to win,” said Boca’s coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto.
“For this jersey, we’re going to leave everything” on the field.
Passions run high in Argentina when it comes to football and more so than ever when it relates to the local derby whose rivalry has been dubbed by many top football magazines and newspapers as the fiercest in the world. There won’t be any Boca fans at the Monumental visiting supporters have been barred from Argentine grounds since 2013 due to a sorry record of more than 300 football-related deaths over the last 50 years, according to figures from the Salvemos al Futbol (Let’s save football) charity.
Passions run high in Argentina when it comes to football and more so than ever when it relates to the local derby whose rivalry has been dubbed by many top football magazines and newspapers as the fiercest in the world