The final weekend of the 2009 Torneo Clausura is upon us at last, and it’s going to be a dramatic one. Racing and Newell’s celebrate having nothing to play for to kick things off on Friday night, whilst Saturday sees Central take on Godoy Cruz in a match that could be vital to next season’s relegation story. The real business, though, is reserved for Sunday: Gimnasia La Plata play Gimnasia de Jujuy, at the same time as which San Martín de Tucumán host Lanús, to decide the order of things relegation-wise. And the finale, the last match of the season, sees Vélez Sársfield at home to Huracán – a home win and El Fortín claim the title, anything else and it goes to El Globo. Wimble-what?
All kick off times are local. Add four hours for British Summer Time.
Primera División Torneo Clausura 2009, nineteenth round:
Arsenal 1 – 1 Independiente (played last Friday)
Racing Club vs Newell’s Old Boys (Fri, 21:15)
Banfield vs Tigre (Sat, 16:10)
Colón de Santa Fe vs Boca Juniors (Sat, 16:10)
Rosario Central vs Godoy Cruz Antonio Tomba (Sat, 18:20)
San Lorenzo de Almagro vs Argentinos Juniors (Sat, 18:20)
River Plate vs Estudiantes de La Plata (Sat, 21:10)
Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata vs Gimnasia y Esgrima de Jujuy (Sun, 13:00)
San Martín de Tucumán vs Lanús (Sun, 13:00)
Vélez Sársfield vs Huracán (Sun, 15:20)
Hasta El Gol Siempre 
Really nice article on Huracan’s DT, Angel Cappa, in today’s Buenos Aires Herald. Seems to be a helluva nice guy and good for Argentine futbol.
Can’t believe it’s ten days since I last watched a football match (Boca 1 GELP 2), all I’ve watched since has been tennis and it seems like ages!
Really enjoyed tonight, though. Instead of starting well and fading out, we recovered from a horrible start, and pretty much dominated. Luguercio played superbly, nearly creating a goal for Caballero and winning the free kick that led to the first goal, as well as his own efforts. Please tell me he’s not leaving as well, he is the heart and soul Racing now.
But I liked Caballero and Lluy as well tonight, Lucero was brave for his goal, but best of all apart from Payaso are Aveldano and ‘goal machine’ Martínez, it’s been brilliant to discover these two.
And it was nice to hear all the top songs being sung before the season closes.
If this flu thing gets any worse, I can see the new season being postponed till September when it gets a little warmer and less prevalent.
Hope everyone’s okay, VAMOS LA AKD!
Never been better, Matt. Thanks for asking!
We won! We won with a comeback!
We’re only 6 points below Independiente in next season’s promedios.
We’re in Copa Libertadores qualification spots (if Estudiantes win it this time around). For the Copa 2010 you qualify on virtue of the points you get in the year 2009 (this Clausura that’s finishing now and the Apertura that starts in August).
So we’re there. Another campaign like this one and we’ll be back in a cup competition (after that Copa Lib 2002).
It was a very entertaining run and I can’t believe tonight I actually enjoyed 90 minutes of a Racing Club match without having to get a calculator or even care about who’s playing who on the weekend.
A great feeling I was missing for a long time!
Vamos Globo now…
Yeah, hope that Huracán can do it tomorrow.
Great podcast by the way, I just listened to it!
It’s always an interesting debate between short and long championships. Yes, I feel sorry for Lanús, but I would only like a long championship if some sort of cup competition was introduced as well.
At least clubs have two chances each season to win something… if there was only one title on offer each season, it would make it less interesting.
And I still think it would re-establish Boca-River domination. But we’ll see if it ever happens, I’m surprised to see everyone talking about ‘Apertura 2009’, as I expected it to go for long championships this August.
As regards Estudiantes, I didn’t watch either leg of the semi-final, they were on too late, I just read the reports on here, but I’ll probably watch the final.
Do Racing fans as a whole want Estudiantes to win to help CL qualification? And Argentinian fans as a whole (though I know Gimnasia fans will not want them to win).
To be honest, I really can’t get up any enthusiasm to support Estudiantes. I like Gimnasia, and I wasn’t impressed to hear Estudiantes fans reacting to a goal by chanting ‘el que no salta se va a la B’, nothing to do with what was on the pitch.
So my instinct is towards Cruzeiro, I’m afraid. But then, I always cheer against the English sides in Europe because I hate them all, apart from (London) Arsenal, as they play nice football.
Hope GELP survive tomorrow and in the play-offs.
I know Sam needs to check out the link, but after listening to the podcast, I did a Google search on Huracán 1973 and found this very interesting video.
The second goal is like something Pastore would do!
Great video, and doesn’t young Brindisi look like a young Oliver Reed, ha ha!
Re the above video.
Does anyone know who is scoring the goals shown, and also, who are they against? The stripes suggest it might be Racing or Estudiantes, difficult to tell in black and white.
First of all…what a horrible tune for that video! hahaha!
Regarding the goals on that video…I’m afraid they are against Racing, mate.
Number 9 was Roque Avallay. He scored a hat-trick that day.
The second goal you see in that video is from Miguel Brindisi, who scored the other two (one from a PK) in a 5-0 win.
It was 4 April, 1973.
Brindisi was a brilliant player. I had the pleasure to watch and enjoy him at Racing in 1984 (he joined us when we were in La B). Some people say he was more important than Diego Maradona in Boca’s 1981 title-winning campaign.
Brilliant player.
As far as Racing fans wanting Estudiantes to win the Libertadores. The long answer would be: “NO EFFING WAY!”
Estudiantes is the team outside the Big5 that Racing fans hate the most. That will never change.
We rather fail to qualify for next year Libertadores (never our main objective in our current state), than for them to win their 4th title.
I’m very afraid of a very possible scenario that we could be witnessing in the next few days. That is Gimnasia going down and Estudiantes winning the Libertadores.
That will officially (if it isn’t already) make of Gimnasia the most unlucky and the most cursed club in the history of world football.
There’s no bigger punishment in life than to support Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata.
La Plata leading Jujuy 1-0 in the battle of the Gimnasias at half-time.
Better yet for Gimnasia La Plata…Lanús are leading San Martín de Tucumán 1-0 (also HT) thanks to a penalty-kick from José Sand.
El Lobo might just dodge the first bullet and if everything ends up like this, they will celebrate getting to the promoción (where they’d be facing Atlético Rafaela).
In the meantime…Roddick and Federer are 11-11 in the 5th set. What a game!
Nice! Gimnasia LP get a lifeline.
They will play la promoción v. Atlético Rafaela. One more chance to stay alive.
Sad to see San Martín de Tucumán, but it was always going to be very hard for them to stay up. Must be tough for them to see Atlético Tucumán promoted whilst they get relegated.
Thanks for the video information Seba!
Well, it looks like Huracán fans will have to keep on making videos about 1973, but what a real killer that was tonight. A team can accept being outplayed, but to have all the circumstances conspire against them like that, and a blatant foul creating the goal, well that must be sickening for poor Cappa.
Bearing in mind what Sam said in the podcast, if Huracán had won, I was going to joke that Cappa would lead Argentina to their next World Cup triumph in Brazil in 2014!
Will that Huracán side break up now? It would be a terrible shame, as I’ve enjoyed watching them, apart from when they were thrashing Racing of course.
On relegation, it’s kind of sad to see San Martín go, as they’ve contributed a lot to the season (not least their crushing win over Independiente!) but rather them than Gimnasia. If they show the same committment as they did in La Bombonera and at home to Vélez, I’m sure Gimnasia will be fine. I just hope they don’t play like against Colón, that really was relegation form.
Yeah, being a Racing fan is pretty painful at times, but being a Gimnasia fan must be even worse – at least we *won* the title we were going for this century. I remember three near misses for Lobo, 95 (Independiente’s fault), 96 (Vélez AGAIN) and 2005, when they really deserved it for Lucas Lobos’s play alone.
Mind you, Huracán fans must have it pretty bad. Every time they’re on the verge of winning a title, they have to play their nearest rivals away in the last match! How weird is that?
And I’m glad my fellow Racing fans will also be supporting Cruzeiro ha ha. I was wondering if an ‘Argentina v Brazil’ patriotism might kick in, and everyone in the country support Estudiantes for a week (apart from Gimnasia fans).
I grew up following (Manchester) City, and it was pretty easy supporting Barcelona in the CL Final as they have a cool image and loads of people like them as a ‘second’ team. But I remember in 99, when United went up against Bayern Munich, even City fans were critizing me for wanting Bayern to win, it was like ‘you’re supporting *Germans* against an English team?!’
Anyway, I’m pretty tired now, it’s been a very long day (what a Wimbledon final as well, I’m glad Gimnasia were never in real trouble tonight as I wouldn’t have known what to watch!), I’ll watch out for more news of the times of la promo and Copa Lib Final games.
Can’t stand those idiotic Velez fans spitting on Toranzo as he was giving an interview in a very chaotic mixed zone where there were more Velez fans than journalist.
They were singing: “El tiki-tiki se lo meten en el culo”. Something like “Stick your beautiful football up your arse”.
It really says a lot about Velez fans.