River Plate (URU) vs Santos Predictions

Tuesday’s Copa Sudamericana first round, first leg action sees Uruguayans River Plate doing battle with Brazilians Santos. The visitors arrive as big favourites in the tie and will be looking to stamp their authority on it with a strong performance.

It’s set to be a big night for River Plate, who make their return to the continental scene for the first time since a 2016 Copa Libertadores group stage elimination. La Dársena aren’t a particularly big hitter in Uruguayan football, and are even less of one on the continental stage and having been handed such a tough first round opponent, they’ll do well to make it any further in the competition.

Still yet to take to the pitch competitively in 2019, thanks to the delayed start to the Uruguayan campaign, it’s hard to know what exactly to expect from the hosts, but one thing is for certain; they’ll have to improve on how they ended 2018. Indeed going back to the end of last year, River lost their last 4 matches, conceding a huge average of 3.75 goals a game in the process.

Meanwhile, there’s a real positive feel around Santos at the moment, with Jorge Sampaoli having made a very strong start to his reign. Peixe were very underwhelming last season, but the ex-Argentina boss has brought a more positive style of playing and hopes are high of a strong domestic and continental campaign.

So far, Santos have won 6 of their 7 competitive outings in 2019 and have done so in very impressive manner, plunging home an average of 2.85 goals a game. That has confidence extremely high in travelling ranks coming into this game and one of the favourites to win the Sudamericana, this is not a tie that is expected to be a particularly difficult one for Santos to win.

Ultimately, there’s a huge disparity between the two sides in just about every relative factor. Man for man Santos are by far the stronger of the two and have resources available to them that River Plate could only dream about and that has the hosts down as huge underdogs over two legs.

With plenty of momentum behind them and in good form, we fully expect Santos to win this match and as such, are happy to back them with maximum confidence. Santos are more accustomed to playing higher pedigree opponents in the Libertadores and given the manner River ended last year, the visitors should face no real issues in Tuesday’s game and we think they’ll run out 2-0 winners as a result.