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In terms of South American football, it doesn't get any bigger than the pairing for this year's Copa Libertadores final: River Plate vs. Flamengo, Argentina vs. Brazil.

No team has won as many Argentinian league titles as River Plate. No club team is as popular in Brazil as Flamengo. Add in a dose of national pride—true whenever the continent's two greatest footballing countries square off—and you've got a potent cocktail.

"It always has a special flavour when an Argentine team beats a Brazilian team, without a doubt," says Maximiliano Benozzi, a Buenos Aires-based journalist who has travelled to Lima, Peru, where the match is being played, to cover it for Clarin, an Argentine newspaper.

River Plate are looking to retain their Copa Libertadores title, which they won in dramatic circumstances last December against city rivals Boca Juniors in a deferred second-leg final played at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid.

Their rivals, Flamengo, are back on the big stage for the first time since their only win, which came in 1981 when their team was inspired by club legend Zico, one of Brazil's most gifted footballers and a scorer of more than 500 goals during his career.

Today's Flamengo edition has goals all over the pitch.

After drawing their Copa Libertadores semi-final first leg against Gremio 1-1, for example, Flamengo went on a 5-0 rampage in the return game at the Maracana. They are romping towards this year's Serie A league title in Brazil, 13 points clear of their nearest rival, Palmeiras, with only a handful of games to play.

According to Thiago Rabelo, a journalist based in Rio de Janeiro who works with Globo, it is 22-year-old Gerson who pulls the strings for the team. He became the most expensive Brazilian player signed by a Brazilian club in history when Flamengo bought him for a reported fee of €11.8 million from Roma in 2019.

"For the dynamic of the team, Gerson is the most important player," says Rabelo. "It's like with the great Barcelona team of Ronaldinho and Deco: Ronaldinho was majestic, but when Deco was playing well, the team played well. Gerson performs a similar function for Flamengo now. He's great at organising the play. At the moment, he's the best Brazilian player playing in the national league.

"He was bought by Roma in 2016, but he was a bit lazy. The Portuguese coach for Flamengo, Jorge Jesus, changed his mentality. Now Gerson participates in more of the game. That's the key now. When he was at Roma—or Fluminense before that—if he had the ball, he was fine. He played. But when he didn't have the ball, he didn't engage."

Gabriel "Gabigol" Barbosa, 23, is the man who benefits most from Gerson's vision on the pitch.

Like Gerson, he has returned home to Brazil. Gabriel was a child prodigy who made his debut for Santos as a 16-year-old against Flamengo in what was club teammate Neymar Jr.'s last game for Santos before moving to Barcelona in 2013. (The pair also soldiered on Brazil's gold-winning team at the 2016 Rio Olympics.)

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An early move to Europe never worked out for Gabriel, though.

In 2016, Inter Milan paid a reported fee of €29.5 million for him, but he only managed 15 appearances and two goals over a couple of seasons (one on loan to Benfica). Since returning to Brazil, though, he's been on fire.

Already this season, he's scored 22 league goals, one more than Zico's all-time season record for the club. The killer instinct—including seven goals in Copa Libertadores games this season—has led the press in Brazil to resurrect his Gabigol nickname, which he was given by his Santos teammates to distinguish him from other players named Gabriel on their team.

Flamengo has done well on the transfer market over the last couple of seasons—in selling, for example, Vinicius Jr. to Real Madrid and Lucas Paqueta to Milan for large sums. They also have another prospect, Reinier, the latest No. 10 from Brazil's dream factory, who has been the focus of much media speculation in Spain during the run-up to the final.

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The 17-year-old made his Copa Libertadores debut for Flamengo against Emelec in July, and he could feature off the bench against River Plate. He has already scored four goals and provided two assists in seven league starts this season. Several clubs, including Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Arsenal, have been linked to him.

Joaquim Piera, who works as Diario Sport's chief football correspondent in Brazil, compares his skill set to Kaka, the 2007 Ballon d'Or winner. He urges caution, however, suggesting he's not yet the finished article.

"It's clear he's one of the jewels that Flamengo has," says Piera. "He's good at dribbling. He's fast, good at arriving in the box and technically skillful. But he still has room to improve. Above all, he has a good agent who has been offering him around Europe for the last few months for quantities of about €30-40 million.

"I don't believe Barca or Real Madrid will pay this kind of money for him because Real Madrid has already paid almost €100 million for Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo, and I don't think Barca will fork out that much for a 17-year-old. He's an interesting player, but it would be a mistake for him not to spend two or three more years developing in Brazil."

Among the players Flamengo have recently recruited is 34-year-old Filipe Luis. A linchpin of Diego Simeone's successful Atletico Madrid side and a Copa America winner with Brazil during the summer, he joined the Rio de Janeiro club in July.

"The supporters of Flamengo have fallen in love with Filipe Luis because he's playing very well," says Rabelo. "Brazilian football fans in general are getting to know him better because he was playing for Atletico Madrid, which isn't a popular team for many Brazilians—in Spain, the popular teams are only Barcelona and Real Madrid.

"Also, the perception is that Atletico Madrid is a defensive team, and so people thought Filipe Luis was defensively minded, but he has many qualities as an attacking player. He's capable of making wonderful passes. And he's very smart. His mentality is completely different to the rest of the team. He says he learned English from watching films, re-watching films like The Shawshank Redemption 30 times."

Marcelo Gallardo, River Plate's coach, is another in the line of great contemporary Argentine coaches, including Simeone and Mauricio Pochettino. When you ask about the secret to River Plate's success, it is repeatedly stressed that the team's power is in the collective. The team has no star. Their great leader is Gallardo.

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"He's taken a leaf out of European coaches' books," says Sam Kelly, Argentina-based founder of the Hand of Pod podcast. "He's studied [Pep] Guardiola. It's clear from River Plate's pressing that he's studied Jurgen Klopp's teams.

"As a personality, he's less melodramatic than Simeone. He doesn't go in for all of this 'knife between the teeth' philosophy that Simeone practiced as a player and likes to live up to as a manager, but Gallardo is clearly identified with River Plate: the club, as they say in Argentina, that gave birth to him as a player."

The similarities between the career paths of Gallardo, who has been touted as a future coach at Barcelona should Ernesto Valverde get sacked, and Pep Guardiola are striking. Both were star players with their clubs. Gallardo, having won a Copa Libertadores with River Plate in 1996, is the club's only footballer to win the competition as a player and a coach.

Like Guardiola when he took over Barca's first team in 2008, Gallardo was a relative novice when he was appointed River Plate's first-team coach in 2014, with only a single title-winning season of previous managerial experience in the Uruguayan Primera Division with Nacional under his belt. Both are heralded for championing academy players—at Barca and River, respectively. Both men, too, are football obsessives.

"The first thing you associate with Gallardo is his work ethic," says Benozzi. "He's all about work, work and more work. He's an animal for work. He can easily stay 12 hours a day studying, training, analysing at River Plate's training complex in Ezeiza, a place outside Buenos Aires.

"For him, it's very hard to relax. If he goes out for dinner or to the cinema, or he is talking with somebody else, his thoughts are always drifting away, thinking about a specific game or a particular passage of play during a match.

"He could be relaxing at home, and suddenly he'll take out his phone and send a message to his coaching staff, telling them, 'Tomorrow, we should practice this exercise,' or 'I just saw this on TV and we should practice it.' His head is constantly thinking about football and how to improve his team."

According to Kelly, Gallardo has had to make do this season without his most talented player: the Colombian Juan Quintero, who has been unable to recover his starting place in the team after returning from a long-term injury.

Gallardo has weaved some magic in converting the 33-year-old Enzo Perez—a starter for Argentina in the 2014 FIFA World Cup final and a Copa Libertadores winner with Estudiantes as far back as 2009—into the team's deep-lying playmaker.

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"Perez has been River Plate's best player this year," says Benozzi. "By coincidence, the coach at Flamengo, Jorge Jesus, coached him at Benfica. He played him as one of two holding midfielders, but when he moved to Valencia, he played as a sole centre midfielder.

"He's the team's brains. He tidies up the play in the middle of the pitch. He gives the team relief. He's good at distributing the ball. He cuts out trouble. He's a complete player, and he gives River a lot of variety in midfield."

History beckons on Saturday. There is much on the line. If River Plate prevail, they'll win their fifth Copa Libertadores title (and Gallardo's third as a manager), putting them within one of their eternal rivals, Boca Juniors.



In February, 10 Flamengo youth academy players died in a fire at their training ground, so a win for the club would be cherished for reasons beyond football.

Many of their fans also have dreams of meeting Liverpool, who Zico's team beat 3-0 in the 1981 Intercontinental Cup final, in this year's FIFA Club World Cup final.

"When Flamengo were playing in the quarterfinal of the Copa Libertadores, their supporters were already talking about Liverpool," says Rabelo. "They forgot about Internacional in the quarterfinals, Gremio in the semi-finals, River Plate in the final. They have just been thinking about playing Liverpool in December because there is an obsession in Brazil for the Club World Cup title.

"That's life. Supporters of Flamengo are very optimistic, but Flamengo reached a peak in September/October. They've slowed up. Flamengo can win the game, but it depends on their mindset because the mentality of River Plate is stronger. They're used to playing in finals. It's going to be a great game. It will be exciting to see who will win."

Follow Richard on Twitter: @Richard_Fitz