50 years later, they are raising their voices for their own day of appreciation

“Vivalda, Pons, Gomiton, Raffaele, Hector Vargas, Zappia, Labonia, Ruben Cabrera, Ramon Gomez, Ruben Bruno and Grubba came on to the field. In the second half Gigli and Luis Maria Giménez came on and among the substitutes there were also Egoya, Amorrone, Rosselló and Juan Carlos Rivero.”.

Daniel Costantino He recounts River’s unusual line-up since 1975 in a row, with the same accuracy as if they were the questionable team these days. The 63-year-old former player – who played a lot in the youth teams and little or nothing in Serie A for Nuñez’s club between 1980 and 1983, although he came to knock down walls with Enzo Francescoli – rescues from his memory the heroes of a small saga blurred by time and the weight of the most famous names of the time.

With this team hastily assembled by Federico Vairo amid the AFC professional players’ strike, River went out to face Argentinos Juniors at Velez Stadium on the night of August 14, 1975 in the 37th matchday of the Metropolitan Championship. For those kids from Divisions Three, Four and Five who were urgently called up, this was the biggest challenge of their budding careers: once again – like so many frustrating attempts since 1957 – the Millonarios had a chance to win the title and reverse the erratic course – with eleven runner-up teams along the way – that had been charted since 1957.

In order to restore the glory and prestige of the institution, this step came at the request of the masses and leaders. River won 1 to 0, once again screaming champions and unleashing the relief that had been contained during an 18-year drought. All the honors went to the stars (coach Angel Labruna, plus Villal, Perfumo, JJ Lopez, Merlo, Alonso, Moretti and Mas, among other key players) and nothing was left for the 16-19 year olds who were responsible for this small final achievement. Instead of receiving congratulations, “rams” and “strikebreakers” were among the epithets with which rivals tried to humiliate them, and were even chanted by their already established teammates at the club, none other than their childhood stars.

“Despite the enormous pressure we had to endure, some of these greats understood our uncomfortable situation and supported us, especially the people of Córdoba (Pablo Comeles, Lapibona Rinaldi and Hector Artico) and Puma Moretti,” admits Ruben Bruno, the unsung hero who scored the only goal of the decisive night, without a hint of dissatisfaction, as he sits comfortably in the River Museum bar next to Costantino and his former teammates. Colleagues Fernando Zappia, Ramon “Mono” Gomez and Ruben “Chacho” Cabrera.

“I received a long pass from Héctor Bargas, missed a defender, dropped the ball narrowly and scored with my left foot at the far post,” Bruno reconstructs his masterpiece sequence, with some echo of the same unbridled passion that was then conveyed in Jorge Bullrich’s (who replaced José María Muñoz) story on Radio Rivadavia.

Half a century after that historic moment was completed, Costantino leads a group of more than a hundred players who have gone through the training classes, and who are proposing to the leaders the official declaration of August 14 as… “Downriver Player’s Day”a kind of tribute to both the star group and this crucial date – which serves as a turning point between the best memories of the people of River Plate – and its heroes.

The idea was proposed by Hugo Ciccolini to some former players seven years ago during a long barbecue after dinner in the club’s barbecue area. From there, the project was presented to each political department responsible for the institution, which took great care to receive the proposal, express its solidarity, and present it without deadlines or news. These days, the hopes of the promoters have revived again, with the crossing of the “River of the World” with the election of new authorities.

“They don’t know about the boys’ sacrifices because they were never players. They also don’t realize that one of them spent many years of his life here,” “Mono” Gomez raises his voice slightly to point out his past, without realizing that he has not left the club completely. Although he managed to prove his abilities in the Premier League in one match from the start and in another he ended up on the bench, after completing his 14-year professional career in the All Boys Club, once the Colombian Caldas and 14 other teams domestic and abroad, he returned to Núñez to work at the River Football School. He has held this distinguished position for 17 years, and is now preparing to take his students to compete in a tournament in Cartagena, Colombia.

Gomez’s fleeting passage through River’s upper class, contrasted with his long walk outside the homeland of adoption and belonging, is the same haphazard journey that fate has destined for his peers. Fernando Zappia, leader of the night of celebration that began in Lignier in ’75, aspired to leave his name stamped among the great figures of the River. But he didn’t have many chances. Although he started in Serie A in 1974 under Enrique Omar Sevori, he only completed twelve Serie A matches, was a free agent, passed through Lanus, and to fulfill his dreams of greatness, he traveled to Europe and further demonstrated his status as a free agent with two years in Austria and a decade in France.

On the day of the unexpected call-up for the main match, Rubén “Chacho” Cabrera was one of the four members of the third team who jumped into first place with Zappia, Labonia and Jiménez. The stage fright faced with such a responsibility raised some doubts, until LaBrona put everything in order in his commanding voice: “Don’t be nervous, be calm and go out and play like always,” the legendary hero of the 1950s instrumental addressed them.

“It was all improvised, as it was a group made up of players from three departments. I met most of them in the locker room. This speaks well of how they work in the River Inferiors team because we understand each other so well on the pitch and they never get to us. What’s more: Norberto Díaz, the Argentinos goalkeeper, was the character,” everyone agrees on the final chapter. They are making an effort to review those memories, hardly hiding the sadness they have choked over the Olympic return that they were not able to make together with the main players, in the last date in the Monumental, after a 2-0 victory over Racing that was abruptly ended at the end of the first half due to the invasion of the stadium by fans.

Shortly after the new champions returned from Phillies Stadium to River (a three-hour trip along Juan P. Justo Avenue, squeezed into a bus that advanced at the speed of a man through a crowd of fans), the celebration was short-lived for Cabrera, who took a hard hit. “At the end of 1975, I was free and I was so frustrated that I didn’t want to play anymore. They tried to convince me to join Racing, and in the end I signed with Sportivo Italiano. But, at the same time, to be able to stay, I had to work with my brothers in a metal enterprise,” he recalls that moment of decisions that turned out to be decisive.

As the 1980s dawned, that group of players sidelined from the headlines began to glimpse their retirement time. Bruno had just finished his emotional scoring contributions at River (where he was relegated with the help of Renato Cesarini in 1966), Los Andes, Central Norte de Salta, Huachipato de Chile, Union de Zabala and Independiente de Neuquén, and was preparing to embark on a new phase, devoting himself successively to selling cosmetics and telephones and exercising his title as artistic director in an exclusive neighborhood.

Gomez signed up as a taxi driver, and Zappia – the revered captain who won the French Cup with Metz in 1984 – installed two five-a-side football pitches in the Parque Avellaneda area. The modest income at that time was not enough to take him for granted.

From beneath one of the display cabinets filled with T-shirts and trophies, came the roar of fans that captured a successful day. Mono Gomez feels supported and adds his voice to the song Invisible Platform. Perhaps this was the most appropriate framework he and his companions needed to relive as faithfully as possible the events of that epic night. Hence, it is clear that this fraternal encounter still has a long way to go.