Will Argentine football enter the era of talent explosion? It may be too early to draw a conclusion, but today's Argentine football is more energetic than in the past few years. A very interesting new star this season is the 16-year-old River Plate midfielder Franco Mastantono. River Plate has just renewed his contract with him until December 2026. The contract stipulates that the termination fee is 45 million euros, which will rise to 50 million euros in the last 10 days of the transfer window, creating a record for the termination fee of Argentine domestic league players.
If a 16-year-old player is concerned because he has renewed his contract with the original club, he will usually have outstanding talent. In the Argentina Cup match held on February 9 this year, Mustantono, who was 16 years old and 177 days old, scored a goal in the 68th minute of the match, becoming the youngest scorer in River Plate's history. The previous record holder was Saviola, who scored his first career goal for River Plate at the age of 16 years old and 311 days old.
Like San Diego Hidalgo of the Independent Team, Mastantano is regarded as the next group of Argentine stars who are most likely to land in Europe: Hidalgo's template is Gretzman, while Mastantano is compared to Kaka. At the same time, Matthias Sule (Fronosine) and Maximo Perone (Las Palmas) have made their mark in Europe this season, and Echevery has also signed a contract with Manchester City. Mastantano is likely to follow in their footsteps.
Mastantono was born in Azur, 300 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. When he was only 3 years old, he began to contact sports. However, in Mastantono's youth, his wish was to become famous in another field - tennis. In fact, Mastantano was very hesitant about whether he was more suitable to become a football player or whether he should devote himself to tennis. He was not sure which field he was more likely to succeed in.
Even until 2017, this kind of trouble still plagued the young Mastantono. Soon his football talent was discovered by River Bed scout, who believed that he had a bright future and suggested the club sign him. However, Mastantono surprisingly rejected Riverbed's invitation because he was devoting a lot of energy to pursuing his tennis dream at that time.
Two years later, Mastantono finally made a choice. He believes that football is the best choice if he wants to make progress in the sports field. Riverbed was very happy that Mustantono joined them, although it was later than expected.
After determining his career direction, Mastantono's football career has made faster development, and he has rapidly grown into one of the best players in Riverbed's youth training system. Over the next four years, Mastantono continued to make progress and was promoted in all age groups of the riverbed. In Riverbed Youth Training, Mastantano, together with Echeverri and Rubeto, are called the three jewels of the club.
At the national team level, Mastantano is also a smooth road. At the age of 15, he was drafted into the Argentina U17 national team by leaps and bounds. With a series of excellent performances in the river bed echelon, he continued to win the favor of the U20 national team.
At the age of 16, Mastantono was called up to the first team of Riverbed. He left a deep impression on the head coach Dmitchellis, so that he directly entered the 11 person starting lineup in the first game of Riverbed in the new season, becoming the third young starting player in the history of Riverbed Club, second only to Matteo Musakio and Omar Rossi.
However, for Masantono, the real breakthrough in his football career will not appear until 2024, which is partly due to the departure of Echeverri - although Masantono is very talented, another young talent in Riverbed, Echeverri, has blocked his way to the first team. Until Manchester City signed Echeverri in the winter transfer window, it opened a clear path for Mastantono to enter the River Plate first team.
In most matches of River Plate's first team, Mastantono was a substitute, but he still got good data. Mastantano is a typical attacking midfielder, and his most obvious way of playing is to carry the ball forward. Despite the nickname of "New Kaka", Argentina seems to be more willing to compare him to Di Maria. For this young man with "crazy left foot", he seems to have all the skills of Di Maria and one on one calm. He is very good at making the opponent's defense out of balance through dribbling and seizing every opportunity to tear the opponent's defense.
Apart from scoring his first goal in the Argentina Cup. In the league match against Rivadavia Independence, Mastantono completed 10 impressive dribbles in just 18 minutes, three of which were forward dribbles.
In other games, such as the games against Banfield and Turkmen, although Mastantano's playing time was only 57 minutes and 45 minutes respectively, he still completed more than 20 dribbles. Now his height has reached 1.80 meters, which makes his role in the competition more comprehensive.
Since Mastantonodo has been a substitute so far, his match heat is very scattered. Nevertheless, we can still see Mastantono's game habit: he likes to take the ball on the side, then cut forward, trying to hit the opponent's defense line through passing or dribbling.
In general, Mastantano likes to play with high risk and high return. He is very suitable for the high pressure football system, such as "Gegenpressing" of Klopper. While he is good at dribbling the ball forward, Mastantano is also very energetic on the defensive side. According to the statistics, he can tackle 0.9 times per game, regain the ball power 1.3 times, and win 3.1 confrontations, 2.8 of which are from ground confrontations. Considering his playing time, this figure can be said to be quite good.
However, Mastantano's more radical playing method has also brought some problems. His average number of goals conceded per game has reached 7.3, which is obviously a data that needs to be improved. But for a 16-year-old attacker, Mastantano has brought us more surprises than concerns. It is worth noting that many new stars have emerged in the position of attacking midfielder/shadow forward/winger in Argentine football today, including Etcheviri, Prestiani, Sule, Hidalgo and Mastantono, who are gradually known by fans. This has always been the position with the most talents in Argentine football tradition. It is said that Real Madrid, Manchester City Barcelona and other clubs are paying close attention to Masantono, and his future development deserves attention.
(Supine support/Santiago Wang)
