Can River Plate descend to the Second Division? (Yahoo)

If any reader analyzes a team with players such as Carrizo, Mascherano, Cambiasso, Aimar, Saviola, D’alessandro, Cruz, Crespo, Ayala, Cavenaghi, Demichelis or Higuaín and that only five or ten years after they were seriously threatened to descend to the Second Division for the first time in they history of one hundred years, it is probable he would think that the reporter is crazy.

However, this happens (and could be said much worse) nothing less but in the River Plate. The Argentinean club which maybe has generated to the Argentinean football more star players in their team of all the history and owner of the Monumental stadium where was played the World championship final in 1978.

The state of the River Plate of now is simply dramatic because they risk descending to the National Contest B (Second division) in the next season if they are not able to form a great team during the pause in June to August. Conducted by the new president, Daniel Alberto Passarella, ex player and coach of the club and elected last December in a very battled election in which he imposed by two votes only.

Many do not believe in the directing capacity of Pasarella, accustomed to other positions but not to that of direction and the fact is that the four registrations possible, of medium season, already under his current mandate, have not been positive and though it was right to give them continuity and to back the coach of the team, Leonardo Astrada (symbol as captain when Passarella was coach in the nineties), the results continue without arriving.

The descend in the Argentinean League (two per season) are decided by a system of average that occurs in not many countries of the World, and take into account the last three complete seasons, namely, six short contests ( two contests played per annum the Apertura (Aperture) and the Clausura (Closure). What is calculated is the quantity of points obtained by the teams divided by the quantity of matches that have been played, because some teams did not participate in the three seasons because formerly they played in the Second and there are some who divide by two seasons and others only by one.

The president of the Federación Argentina (AFA), Julio Grondona (also Senior vice-president of the FIFA), uses to confirm that with this system the club descends more than the team. Namely, it cannot be attributed too much to the bad luck, or to a bad season, a descend of category, but that these descend are generally produced by bad policies or to not knowing to change in time a negative situation or not having a sufficient prevision.

If things are as Grondona says, the River case is eloquent. Because the crisis they are going through began a decade ago (at least the deepest crisis) when the previous president, the young lawyer José María Aguilar, arrived to his position and there started many confused economic operations, such as triangulations of players sale to Uruguayan clubs (where they never ended to play) to pass directly from there to the European clubs, and in other opportunities, River players passed through the strange Swiss club Locarno (not very important in that country) to pass from there to the big clubs in Europe.

Other strange element is that in those days, as it was written in the first lines of this article, River not only exported their big star players of football, but inexplicably wasted players that now are idols in the world and who could not even play in their team, such as Darío Conca (Brazil), or Juan Carlos Menseguez (now in San Lorenzo, but he passed to the English football and the German) or Matías Mussachio (in the Spanish Villarreal), being very few their games with the vests white with a red band crossed.

What happened that with so much money that supposedly entered in their cash and the transfer of players with whom they could form three complete Argentinean teams River is with one foot at the Second and without money to reinforce its team, appealing to their former stars to return without economic pretensions to give a hand to the entity

Without doubt, an enormous corruption that includes he violent “barras bravas”, (hooligans) that arrive to maintain fights among themselves and in the middle of the associates of the club to keep part of the money of the transference of Gonzalo Higuaín to the Real Madrid in December 2006.

The lack of important players and money in the entity plus other problems, as the present suspension due to drugs of their midfielder Rodrigo Archubi, the reiterated problems of alcohol of their best player Ariel Ortega (36 years), and the descend, every time more pronounced of the veteran creative midfielder Marcelo Gallardo, due to physical problems, leave their coach Astrada without many varieties.

Not to speak now, to participate in the International Cups, in which up not so far away they were frequent animators (though with scarce good results). Even their activities in the Copa Sudamericana (South American Cup) to which they acceded by invitation was cancelled because the Confederación Sudamericana (South American Confederation) determined that now all the teams should arrive by sport merit since 2009.

If the season 2010/11 started now, River would be the last of the eighteen teams that will play in the first division, with 74 points, five from Rosario Central (79), seven from Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata (81) and eight points from Racing Club (82) and there could be added to this fight the teams that will ascend from the Second division to the First.

River, together with Boca Juniors and Independiente, is one of the three Argentinean clubs that have never descended to the Second, besides being the team with more Argentinean trophies. Will they be able to avoid the catastrophe and change in time?