The best player in world football inspired Trebor Mahtal’s Manchester United to Premier League and Champions League glory in 2041. That meant the Zambian ticked the seventh letter off his Alphabet Challenge mission, so there were ‘just’ 19 to go.
Mahtal resigned from his Old Trafford role one day after becoming Champion of Europe and went in search of his next challenge. After two dominant seasons with strong teams, Mahtal was keen for a bit more of a challenge. A few interesting opportunities were available, and he applied for several jobs as far away as Australia, Argentina and England. Two clubs quickly came in with interview offers, and one was clearly more keen – which meant Mahtal was off to Argentina to take a £116,500 wage cut!
Who Are Racing Club de Avellanda?
Racing Club is a professional sports club based in Avellanada, a city within the Buenos Aires province. The club was formed by a group of Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway workers, who played football matches against British immigrants in a field belonging to the company. In 1898, they founded Argentinos Excelsior Club, which was soon disbanded and became Racing Club, named after a French motor racing magazine. In its early days, the club had some interesting club colours, starting with yellow and black stripes then an intriguing jersey of four light blue and pink squares. That was replaced by the now iconic light blue and white colours in 1910.
Racing Club is historically recognised as one of the “big five” of Argentinian football, along with Boca Juniors, River Plate, San Lorenzo and Independiente. It was the first club in the world to win seven successive league titles and the first Argentinian club to become world champion. It won its first national title in 1913 and has gone on to win 17 more, the most recent in 2019. It also became champions of South America by winning Copa Libertadores in 1967. Racing have added two more titles during this save, winning the Argentinian title back in 2027 and Copa Libertadores in 2026. However, it’s struggled of late, finishing in a lowly 22nd in 2039, then 5th and 6th, and currently sits 13th after 23 games of the 27-game Liga Profesional de Fútbol.
Racing play at the impressive 51,389-capacity Presidente Peron ‘El Cilindro de Avallaneda’ and having solid infrastructure of 19 youth recruitment, 18 junior coaching, 12 training facilities and 11 youth facilities. It also has a 4-star reputation but isn’t doing so well financially, with the club £1m in the red and £45m of net debt and spending £150k over the minuscule £91k weekly wage budget. Despite those positives, Mahtal walked into a nightmare with masses of players wanting out or demanding new contracts that the club couldn’t afford then mass mutinies when he didn’t sell certain players or didn’t offer contracts to others. So he was forced into a mini clearout that saw 23 players depart for a profit of around £26m, which at least allowed him to stop the club overspending on wages.
The best player remaining at Racing was wonderkid attacker Walter Acuna, along with centre backs Luis Aranda and Gonzalo Lo Coco, full backs Maximiliano Coronel and Valentín Fernandez, striker Lautaro Viotti and midfielders Leandro Olivera and Diego Rivarola.
But the big appeal of coming to Argentina was prodigious youth talent, and Racing didn’t disappoint. Mahtal was pretty excited about strikers Mario Cabrera and Nicolás Schiavi, midfielder Lucas Domínguez and wingers Emiliano Rotondi, Maximiliano Villalba, Ignacio Yanez and Andrés Diaz, so he focused on giving these youngsters as much gametime as possible.
Getting Started In Argentina
Mahtal had four games to play in Liga Profesional, before the second league tournament Copa de la Liga began. His first match in Argentina was three weeks after his appointment and he had a mass of injuries to contend with, so he initially plugged in a fairly basic 4-3-3 approach. Racing hosted Newell’s Old Boys and started well as midfielder Diego Rivarola converted a low shot from 20 yards. But Newell’s equalised just after halftime and they played out a tepid second half… until Lo Coco’s tame shot was deflected in by a defender for a probably undeserved 92nd-minute winner.
That was backed up by Rivarola scoring twice in a 4-3 thriller at Banfield, who scored twice in injury time to make it look respectable. But a big test of their credentials came at home to leaders River Plate, who won a poor game 1-0 with a very dodgy penalty to win the league title. Racing won 2-1 at All Boys on the final day to secure a pretty solid 10th place, level on points with Boca Juniors but a huge 26 behind champions River.
The season flowed straight into the two-group Copa de la Liga, which Mahtal began by testing a 4-2-4 approach that failed massively in a 4-1 defeat at home to Gimnasia. He tweaked the shape slightly only to lose 3-1 at Argentinos and 4-2 at Defensa y Justicia, so that clearly wasn’t working. A more conservative approach saw a marked improvement as Acuna scored the only goal at home to Guillermo Brown then Diaz’s first senior goal nicked a 2-1 win over Lanús.
Racing continued to struggle away from home but picked up late wins at home to Instituto and Huracán before finishing the campaign with yet another away defeat, 2-1 at Talleres. In fact, they failed to win any of their eight away games, but won four out of six at home. As a result, Racing finished 12th out of 14 in Copa de la Liga and 15th in Liga Profesional de Fútbol overall, which combines both the main league season and the secondary campaign.
A Disappointing Start At Racing
The move from Manchester United to Racing Club had certainly raised eyebrows and had been a far from easy transition for Mahtal. He’d struggled to get results but his enforced focus on youth, including handing five debuts to youth products, had seen several players enjoy rapid improvement, including the flourishing Schiavi who was definitely one to build the team around. This season, Acuna led the way with 16 goals in 34 games and the rest of the squad combined only managed 26 goals between them. Viotti scored 9 but struggled at the end of the season and Rivarola was probably the best performer in Mahtal’s time at the club, scoring 8 in 40.
Elsewhere in South America, there was an intriguing story as Chilean side O’Higgins beat Palmeiras and Fluminense to reach the Copa Libertadores Final, only to lose 1-0 to Sao Paulo. While Huracán and Aldosivi, who finished 21st and 16th overall in Argentina, reached the Copa Sudamericana Final with Huracán winning 1-0. So those stories offered hope for all teams on the continent!
However, there were also concerns about the finances at the club, which was haemorrhaging a £1.5m per month net loss with no obvious way to address it without selling their best players. So if teams were to show an interest in Mahtal, the Zambian may well be interested.
Would Mahtal stay in Argentina to strengthen his Racing Club team? Or jump ship at the end of the season? Join us on Monday to find out!
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