"I’m not surprised to hear that they want to offer me three more years, in my other posts I’ve always done well [something that Brazilian club Corinthians may well contend] and here I’ve been given the chance to get a project underway", explained Passarella.

The Argentinean Kaiser expressed his feelings to radio station La Red: "I don’t want to leave this club as I’m very happy here, and probably over the course of the next few days I’ll be able to announce my renovation as Coach for the next three years" he added.

“Given the fact that I’ve only been here for four months, I feel that the squad is beginning to develop along the lines I planned. We do have to rotate players for both the Clausura and Libertadores, but injuries have racked the squad. If we could have fielded the same team more then we would have probably been classified [in the Libertadores] by now".

River have their final Libertadores fixture on Thursday, hosting Libertad with a chance to go through to the last sixteen dependent on a win. Passarella will probably go for the following first eleven: Germán Lux; Paulo Ferrari, Julio Cáceres, Cristian Tula, Lucas Mareque; Jonathan Santana, Oscar Ahumada, Víctor Zapata; Daniel Montenegro; Ernesto Farías and Gonzalo Abán.

Aaron Marcus