Manuel Lanzini, a reinforcement to take a leap in quality at River – Credits: @Prensa River
They both know what it means to win at La Bombonera. They both know what it’s like to score a goal against Boca. They both know what it’s like to wear River’s number 10 on their back. They both know perfectly the millionaire’s DNA and palate. The two returned in the last transfer market to reunite with the club. The two savor Sunday’s game as a special, different duel. And the two hope to hit the table to meet the fan again. Manuel Lanzini and Gonzalo “Pity” Martínez will once again be part of the superclásico. The first will do so after nine years and with a very high chance of being part of the starting team. And the second will do it again a little less than five years after the historic final in Madrid. Emotional impact.
According to the work that Martín Demichelis has done this week, Lanzini is shaping up to be a starter in the 4-2-3-1 that the River coach creates for Sunday. The striker who arrived on a free transfer from West Ham in England played 311 minutes in the six League Cup games with four starts (he was always replaced) and two entries from the bench and still could not convert or assist. With an average of 52 minutes per game, we are still waiting for the best version of him: neither has he found his football with continuity nor has the coach found him the best role in the team.
Manuel Lanzini, River offensive midfielder – Credits: @Prensa River
But the past winks at River’s number 10 for the classic. “I’m not crazy about wearing Boca, I want to play for River,” Manu told his father Héctor when he was still a child. A millionaire fan, he did not agree to move to Xeneize when Ramón Maddoni, the club’s historic talent scout, set his sights on him to join the minor divisions. Thus, after his time at Academia Kaly de Ituzaingó, 4 de Mayo de San Antoio de Padua and 77 Fútbol Club de Morón, in 2003 he landed in River after not completing the tests in Vélez at just 10 years old. When he arrived at Núñez, Lanzini started playing as a left midfielder, but they advanced him until he became a striker.
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Throughout his first stage at the club, Lanzini played 91 games, scored 13 goals and won two titles –Final and Super Final 2014– between 2010 and 2014 at River, which in the 2011/2012 season, after relegation to the B Nacional, he loaned it to Fluminense for one year. Then, after playing the first game of Marcelo Gallardo’s cycle on July 27, 2014 against Ferro for the Argentine Cup, he was sold to Al Jazira, from the United Arab Emirates, for about six million dollars. And now, after a long and successful spell with West Ham with 226 official matches with 32 goals, 28 assists and a title, he has the opportunity to write another golden page in the superclassics.
It is that during that period with the red band, the 10 became strong in the superclásicos: he scored the fastest goal in the history of the duel at 46 seconds in the 1-1 draw of the 2013 Final Tournament in the Bombonera; and he scored a great goal to win 2-1 in the 2014 Final Tournament and break an extensive ten-year streak without million-dollar wins as a visitor against Boca. But he also celebrated with another goal in a friendly in the summer of 2014 in Córdoba to win 2-0 at the start of a successful year.
Profiled to be a starter, Lanzini will experience a special day at the Bombonera, as will Gonzalo Martínez, one of his natural replacements who will have his place on the substitutes’ bench. Pity, which sealed its return last August after almost five years, returned to the fields last Sunday against Banfield: it added 20 minutes to begin to regain ground since its last official match had been on February 17 with Al-Nassr before of suffering a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
With his medical discharge more than a month ago, Martínez is in a logical process of football reconditioning due to his extensive inactivity. During his time in Saudi Arabia he only played 58 games (42 starts) with 3,789 completed minutes and 13 goals since September 2020. That is, he played an average of 19 games per year and 65 minutes per game. What happened? In March 2021 he suffered a rupture of the external collateral ligament in his right knee and only returned in December; Then, he was out of action from June to December 2022 due to pericarditis prior to the stoppage for the Qatar World Cup; and in February of this year he suffered his second ligament injury.
But, apart from the sparks of his talent that he already showed against Banfield in the South, the presence of Pity in La Bombonera is a mental injection for River. Because the current number 18 has always been strong in the superclassics. He enjoys them, understands them, plays them with another energy. Between 2015 and 2018, Pity played 12 official superclassics with 5 wins, three draws and four losses in which he scored four goals and received a warning. In addition, he also has a positive record in friendlies with five wins and three losses.
Within that history are three of the five consecutive eliminations in Marcelo Gallardo’s cycle, since he played in the round of 16 of the 2015 Copa Libertadores; the final of the 2017 Argentine Super Cup; and the final of the 2018 Copa Libertadores. In all of them he was decisive: in 2015 he received the foul from Leandro Marín for the penalty that became the only goal of the series; In 2018 he scored the first penalty goal in the 2-0 win in Mendoza to win the Super Cup; and in the historic final of that same year he assisted Lucas Pratto in the first goal of the 2-2 of the first leg in the Bombonera and converted the emblematic 3-1 in Madrid to shout champion.
Gonzalo Pity Martínez, another River player who almost always did well against Boca – Credits: @Prensa River
Now, Pity will return to the Bombonera, where he asserted his nobility, his courage and his daring for this type of crosses. With a self-confidence typical of his talent, the image of him entering the first final of the Libertadores 2018 was recorded, looking at the Xeneizes stands with a defiant calm and a smile that anticipated what could come. And because at the local level he knew what it means to celebrate in that territory: he converted it into the 3-1 victory of the First Division Tournament in 2017; and he scored in the 2-0 victory in the Super League in 2018.
They never played together, but now they are united by the same feeling: Lanzini and Martínez will have the opportunity to play a superclassic again, that special event in which they were engraved in fire. River needs them. And he waits for them.
2023-09-30 07:17:25
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