River reaches La Plata on July 29 at 19:15 with no room left to drift. Eduardo Coudet’s side is still looking for its first Torneo Clausura win, and the trip to the Estadio Juan Carmelo Zerillo comes after defeats to Barracas Central in the league and Aldosivi in the Copa Argentina.
The search for a result now has a face attached to it: Alex Woiski. River rescinded his contract on Wednesday afternoon, ending a spell in which he never concentrated with the first team and never made the jump from Reserva to Primera. It is a small move on paper, but it lands on the same day River is trying to steady itself in a season that has already started badly.
Coudet’s calculation is straightforward. River needs points to improve its place in Zona B and stay in the race near the top of the annual table, so the team is expected to go into the match with four changes from the middle of the field forward. That is where the pressure sits. Not on the back line, but in the part of the team that is supposed to turn possession into goals.
The likely XI shows how much is being adjusted. Santiago Beltrán would be in goal behind Gonzalo Montiel, Lucas Martínez Quarta, Nicolás Otamendi and Marcos Acuña. Lucas Silva and Mauro Arambarri would sit in midfield, with Joaquín Freitas, Ángel Correa and Tomás Galván behind Lucas Beltrán. Sebastián Driussi is still injured, and Aníbal Moreno is unavailable, so River goes into a must-win game with one of its usual attacking references missing and a midfield reshaped around the need to recover fast.
Gimnasia, for its part, is not arriving untouched either. It lost to Racing in its own debut and is expected to line up with Nelson Insfrán; Bautista Barros Schelotto, Renzo Giampaoli, Enzo Martínez and Pedro Silva Torrejón; Ignacio Miramón, Mateo Seoane, Alexis Steimbach and Nacho Fernández; Jeremías Merlo and Agustín Auzmendi. The match will be shown on Premium, which means the pressure is not just inside the dressing rooms. It will be on every screen from the first whistle.
River’s problem is that the urgency is real, but so is the instability. A side that has already dropped its first two matches of the semester now has to find a result away from home while carrying injuries, an absence in midfield and a new attacking shape. If the changes work, River can stop the early damage. If they do not, the season will have turned from a bad start into a familiar chase before July is even over.
