Rosario Central, one of the best teams of the second half of the year, and Platense, a pleasant revelation, will play this Saturday in the final of the Professional League Cup in Santiago del Estero. The match that will consecrate a new Argentine soccer champion, which if it were Platense would be something unprecedented, will be played from 9 p.m. at the Madre de Ciudades stadium, in the capital of Santiago, which on the previous day received the teams with a temperature of 31 degrees. The referee of the final will be Nicolás Ramírez and the television will be provided by ESPN Premium and TNT Sports.
Central, led by Miguel Ángel Russo, reached the final after having successively eliminated two greats, Racing Club and River Plate, and is very close to making an Olympic return after five years, when it won the Argentine Cup in 2018. El Calamar, for its part, appealed to the enormous figure of its goalkeeper Ramiro Macagno to successively eliminate Huracán and Godoy Cruz de Mendoza in a series of penalties.
Central and Platense have a characteristic in common, since they began the season worried about moving away from the relegation spots, and with very good campaigns they left that issue behind and qualified for the quarterfinals, as quarterfinals of Zones A and B. respectively.
“We have to see where we come from. When we started with Gonzalo (president Belloso) we were five points away from relegation, with the club collapsed. We lost games and suffered very hard blows but we always got back up. It is important to know where we come from to assess where we are. stopped now,” recalled Russo, the great mentor of the “Canalla” team.
The Rosario team began a comeback in the Rosario classic, which they reached when they were last in their zone, but that goal from a free kick by Ignacio Malcorra in stoppage time gave them a 1-0 victory and a very important boost, since they did not He stopped adding and winning.
The most significant victory was in Rosario over River (3-1) on the penultimate date, thus stretching their undefeated record to 28 games at the Gigante de Arroyito stadium, and then closing with another victory that secured them through the general table of points accumulated during the year a place in the 2024 Copa Libertadores.
In the heads-up, Central passed two greats in series of penalties, supported by its goalkeeper, captain and reference Jorge “Fatura” Broun, who contributed his “magic hands” to stop the penalties executed by Enzo Díaz, Agustín Palavecino and the “Pity” Martínez, while Manuel Lanzini threw his into the stands of the Mario Kempes stadium in Córdoba.
Platense will be in front, led by Martín Palermo, who in his playing days was coached by Russo in Estudiantes de La Plata and Boca Juniors, and who intends to win a title that would be historic as it is the first in the history of the club originating from the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Saavedra.
“The fact of having started the season fighting relegation led to playing on equal terms against all rivals, and having passed two qualifying rounds (against Huracán and Godoy Cruz) strengthened the group because they managed to play regardless of the context, that is something very well,” analyzed the former striker and coach squid Claudio Spontón in dialogue with Télam, highlighting that Palermo’s imprint is noticeable.
As for the formations for the final, both Russo and Palermo plan to repeat the formations that played in the League Cup semi-finals. However, Russo hesitates between keeping Agustín Toledo in the midfield or including a forward like Maximiliano Lovera so that the Mexican Luca Martínez Dupuy has more company up front. On the Platense side, faced with a unique and perhaps unrepeatable possibility of being champion and also entering to play in the next Libertadores, the “Titan” Palermo will not touch anything, very satisfied with what the team showed in the previous series.
“No one reaches the final just because. Both Platense and we deserved to be in this place, no one gave us anything,” Russo recalled.
2023-12-16 03:01:00
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