A case for the couch. Is Demichelis lost and self-sabotaging at the most important moment of her River cycle?

That celebration in front of the audience and the thunderous goal cry that takes him back to his time as a player for River and the national team (without ignoring his time at Bayern Munich and other clubs in Spain and England), were a a sign of externalization of the entire process that Martín Demichelis has gone through since he returned to Núñez with a high-risk mission: to take the reins left by the winningest coach in the history of the institution. Marcelo Gallardo He sealed not only a number: he became the icon that he had not been able to be as a footballer. The lighthouse. A reference forever. But it’s not there anymore.

Demichelis bet big on his return. Argentinian, always, but almost another European. Him and his family. Germany was his home: another culture, customs, certainties, comfort and concerns different from those that the father-mother-children nucleus may have in a Buenos Aires with more folklore, social life and relationshipism. And everything bad too, which would cover an endless comparative list endorsed in the slogan of that advertising that immortalized the Mouse Ayala promoting a brand of ankle boots: “You can’t get them in Europe.”

Enzo Pérez arrives at the River bench and surprises DemichelisTV capture

He’s already into the dance. There is no press conference in which he is not asked if “he feels watched”, “why he has not yet won the fans’ hearts”, “if he is wrong with the choice of players”. The week that is ending included many questions with disease for being the first confrontation with Enzo Perez, the reference who chose to leave the club due to the conviction of not being able to spend another month with the coach who had broken “the codes” in a talk with journalists that did not pay off. Demichelis today resembles someone sitting on the grass in a park without having been sprayed with repellent: not a quiet second.

He won the two superclassics he played and was not far from triumphing in the third. He won three titles/cups (in this variety offering the AFA of Claudio Tapia and his troupe of hand lifters), he usually does well in the classics, but he fell far short of the main challenge he took on as River coach: winning the fifth Copa Libertadores.

Your product went through different stages. From an ascending, Europeanized football, of an almost unsurpassable level and with a squad in the style of the colossi of the Old Continent, to an unprotected, intermittent and disoriented football. Enzo Pérez left and the club had to go shopping to try to cover a crater in a key position-role that Merlo, Gallego, Astrada, Almeyda and Ponzio went through. And Demichelis always observed, pointed out. By experts (including analysts) who supposedly understand more about football than someone who played the sport for 20 years.

He lives the games intensely and knows that he is always watched by the fanLuciano Bisbal – Getty Images South America

“What a bad team Demichelis put together for the Argentine Super Cup with Estudiantes!” Voices grew louder from different sectors. That, they claim, would have been the determining factor for River to be overwhelmed in the first 10-15 minutes, to concede a goal and not be able to match it on the score, although it did so territorially. Afterwards, he introduced five changes because that’s how he thought it would be and he would have even been enlightened when he thought out loud “I’m going to put Aliendro in so he can make the key in an angle in stoppage time.”

He must be, Demichelis, some kind of plane commander that, even knowing that the ship has various defects, that the landing gear does not go up nor do the rudder or flaps work, decides to take off anyway. Simply because he has a reckless spirit, he loves to challenge destiny and bet on divine power. And he does all of this together, furthermore, when he knows he is being observed, questioned and while the majority of fans do not talk about whether it would be a good idea to renew his contract as a bet for the future, but instead think about possible substitutes. The guy would be a kind of kamikaze who attacks his product!

Smiles at a press conference, something that does not happen often when questioned

In short, Demichelis should only be an ordinary man, a former professional player, now a coach by profession, who is right and wrong like so many others. His name is Gallardo, Bianchi, Bilardo, Basile, Simeone or Bielsa. Even the immaculate Guardiola fails and can spend an entire game looking anguished, as happened last Sunday against Liverpool.

And Demichelis is also the coach in the process of consolidation that abuses a stark frontality. Choose to speak, choose to answer everything and openly, when I should probably be more diplomatic. We take only the last example: Enzo Pérez. Beyond the obvious discomfort that he could not hide before the pre-match greeting, perhaps imagining that the midfielder would pass by in the same way – and not coincidentally – that in one of the last games in River, when he was replaced, he chose to go up to the substitute bench in a distant sector where the coach was so as not to see him.

When asked if he was surprised by the greeting, he could have said, “I was not surprised by Enzo Pérez’s attitude because I know the kind of person he is.” And period. When he expands and gives the example that “I brought him out in the last game so that he could be applauded” or that “I didn’t care if he greeted me or not,” he adds messages instead of refrain. He wants, or needs to do them, but they may not add up. Maybe he still lacks the timing that every defender has (like he was).

The celebration of winning the League in 2023Rodrigo Nespolo – Digital Canon

Demichelis took a breath and avoided facing the worst scenario almost at the beginning of the year. Although the variety of Tapia y Cía. They give us the feeling that more than one tournament has already been played by virtue of the carousel of weekly matches that there is. We are only in March and the Libertadores is coming again, the thermometer for fans. Imagine, suppose, affirm that someone, in the final adjustment towards the great challenge, choose to self-sabotage or play with destiny like Russian roulette is to underestimate to a professional who, when it comes to football, understands much more than all of them.

Claudio Cervino

Themes

Martín DemichelisLeague Cup 2024Enzo Pérez

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