This post was originally published on this site.
River Plate versus Boca Juniors is renowned as the world’s fiercest football rivalry.
So when the Superclasico was used to explain to Joaquin Moro what Leicester Tigers’ meeting with East Midlands neighbours Northampton Saints meant, the Argentine flanker immediately understood.
Moro is a River Plate fan like his brothers and the rest of the family.
He has watched the Superclasico in person at River’s 85,000-capacity Mas Monumental stadium, and the mere mention of that experience evokes a smile and little shake of the head as he recalls it as being “so good”.
On Saturday, it will be in front of a packed crowd of nearly 26,000 at Mattioli Woods Welford Road that Moro will be involved in the East Midlands derby at home in the Prem for the first time.
While it is a fixture he has been a part of twice before – having featured off the bench in October’s league defeat at the Cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens before scoring twice in their Prem Cup group stage win against Saints a month later – the enormity of Saturday’s game was quickly made clear to him at the start of the week by homegrown Tigers scrum-half Jack van Poortvliet.
“On Monday Jack, one of the boys from the team that has played here for a long time, he came to me and told me this is a big game for us, we take it like Boca v River in Argentina,” Moro told BBC Radio Leicester.
“I’m starting to feel it that way, like them. I know it’s a big game.
“All the boys give us the feeling of playing these types of games and how to play. The coaches, they are ex-players from Leicester, so they have the same experience and I’m very excited to play at Welford Road.
“It sold out two weeks ago so it is going to be be a lovely place to play.”
It is fitting to have the Superclasico compared to the East Midlands derby this time around, with the use of an ‘away end’ – a concept more associated with football – being trialled in a fiery local rivalry that dates back to 1880 for the first time.
While Saints fans have been allowed to buy tickets for any part of the ground as usual, efforts to generate a bigger atmosphere has seen portions of the Tradeview Markets Stand and Mattioli Woods Stand allocated as zones for travelling supporters.
Tigers head coach Geoff Parling says “good crowds” and the “intensity” of the action on derby day are things he remembers most about his meetings with Saints when he was a player at Leicester more than a decade ago.
The latest edition of the derby could be a decisive one between two of the Prem’s top sides.
Prem leaders Saints are four points clear of second-paced Bath with four games of the regular season remaining, while Leicester are six points further back in third.
“We know it will be a great occasion,” Parling said.
“I don’t think we have to speak too emotionally about it during the week. We are more about preparing how we normally prepare.”
