The 2026 Clausura season may already be underway, but away from the pitch the Liga Profesional de Fútbol’s 30 participants continue to chop and change their squads in their quest for a title four months from now. And as usual around this time of year, River Plate are taking a leading role in those off-field switches.
It has not been a happy start to the season for the Millonario. Despite bringing in the grizzled figure of Nicolás Otamendi to shore up the defence and old favourite Rafael Borré up front, River have kicked off the new campaign with three consecutive defeats. The pressure is already on Eduardo Coudet after losing out in the Apertura final to Belgrano, and if things do not take an upward turn soon the coach may be looking for a new job far sooner than he could have imagined when he took over from Marcelo Gallardo back in March.
El Chacho’s future at the Monumental remains to be seen. One of the first casualties of this disappointing run has already emerged, though, as Maxi Salas prepares to depart the club – a player whose River stint says much about the current precarious nature of Argentine football.
You may remember that just a year ago Salas was the belle of the ball as far as the winter transfer market was concerned. Plucked from relative obscurity by Racing Club, the combative forward was a revelation for La Academia and helped Gustavo Costas’ team lift the 2024 Copa Sudamericana, scoring in the final against Cruzeiro.
By the time June 2025 came around Salas’ feet were already itchy and he did everything possible to convince a reluctant Racing to let him go to one of their arch-rivals, with River eventually triggering the player’s release clause to oblige a deal – breaking one of the local game’s unwritten rules when it comes to deals between Liga Profesional sides. Salas left Avellaneda under a cloud, while River’s aggressive manoeuvres also won them few friends around the top flight. The upshot of that conflict: thirty-seven games, seven goals, no titles and now a swift trip out of Núñez via the back door.
For if Salas showed scant loyalty to his previous employers, he was afforded little better by River. Coudet never appeared convinced by his more rustic skillset and, once the Apertura came to a close, sent him to the so-called ‘container’ – a separate training facility, part holding cell, part purgatory, cobbled together for Salas and 10 other members of the bloated Millonario payroll deemed surplus to requirements by the coach and forced to use a shipping container as a makeshift dressing room. “We were treated very poorly,” Salas fired to Radio La Red once his loan move to Independiente Rivadavia was confirmed on Tuesday. “It’s not good being there, locked in a container… I would have liked for Coudet to have told us what was going on.”
Who can say whether Salas would have fared better sticking with Racing. Perhaps, if the goals had dried up, there would have been a shipping container waiting in Avellaneda too for the forward. Or maybe his attacking thrust would have given La Academia what they needed to get past Flamengo in last year’s Libertadores and a whole new chapter in footballing history would have been written.
It is irrelevant. The forward pursued his dreams and ambitions in going to Núñez, knowing that careers in the game are short and he had to take advantage when his stock was highest. If anything, this latest twist only vindicates that decision. Even the best footballers are seen as barely more than names on a teamsheet or numbers on a balance sheet, assets to pump or cut loose on the shortest notice depending on their performance. How can we expect loyalty from players, when even the nation’s most storied and prestigious clubs can turn on them at a minute’s notice and send them off to a shipping container?
