Copa Libertadores 2013

Oh boy, Tigre will return to SP, this time to face Palmeiras.

Group of death for me could be the Fluminense group.

 

Sounds like you're taking "group of death" too literally.

 

Yeah, for Barcelona, Nacional and Toluca.

 

With Carlos Bianchi back there's a good chance that Riquelme will return, and that immediately moves Boca up a notch as a candidate.

They will also look to replace Schiavi, there's talk of Cata Diaz returning, he wants to come back but it's going to be tough financially. Most likely Boca raids another Argentine club to get a decent central defender like possibly Mariano Etcheverria from Tigre or Claudio Perez from Belgrano. Plus Boca added Guillermo Burdisso after the last Libertadores and that's already an improvement over what they had in central defense last time.

There's also talk of repatriating Fernando Gago (maybe a pipe dream) and Burrito Martinez (but every other team wants him too). Bianchi will want to get another top player from somewhere. Plus Boca seems determined not to sell the talented kids, like Sanchez Miño, Colazzo, Paredez and Pol Fernandez, and they should be getting better as they gain experience. And veterans like Ledesma, Erviti, Silva etc also return.

So, overall -if Riquelme returns- Boca should on paper be stronger than last year, except that they'll definitely miss the unpredictability of Mouche up front.

 

Nothing will happen cause Sao Paulo picked on an easy target. Tigre's stadium is in a nice suburban town (Victoria) and has rather well behaved fans, at least in relative terms of course. Now if Sao Paulo's aggression had been against some other Argentine team -and I don't mean just the big teams but say for example a tough team like Chacarita, Huracán, Lanus or one of the teams from La Plata, Rosario or Santa Fe, then I can guarantee you there would be hell to pay when they came to Argentina.

 

Well, Nacional has the garra charrua and its history, they'll be tough. Mexican teams are usually complicated plus Toluca has the altitude. Then there's ... hey wait a second, how did Barca get into our group? Yeah with the two best teams in the world, with Messi and possibly Riquelme, you bet it's the group of death.

 

You miss my point. I'm just saying that Tigre is not known as one of the "tough" teams in terms of barras and it's in a nicer neighborhood so their fans tend to be a bit less "heavy". I'm not arguing about what happened in Sao Paulo. I'm sure that you see the incident one way as a Brazilian, but I can guarantee you that the hinchada of a team like Huracan would see it quite differently.

 

Well, I'm pretty sure that there are rules in terms of teams from the same country getting put in the same "pot" so they don't end up in the same group. But the rules don't apply to the teams that play in the first round, and those are the ones that end up getting stuck in the same group with another team from the same country. I agree that it's better to keep that from happening and that's something that Conmebol ought to fix, it shouldn't be too hard to tweak the lottery in order to keep it from happening.