Copa Libertadores final to be played outside Argentina

The troubled Copa Libertadores final between River Plate and Boca Juniors will go ahead, but will do so outside Argentina on 8 or 9 December.

Saturday’s second leg due to be hosted at River Plate game was initially delayed until Sunday after home supporters attacked the Boca team bus. Tear gas and broken glass meant several of the Boca players required medical treatment.

Former Manchester City, Manchester United and Juventus striker Carlos Tevez reportedly suffered from dizziness and vomiting and was being treated by club doctors according to local press reports.

On Sunday, the match was postponed again amid headlines which suggested a deliberate ploy from an organised group of River Plate hooligans known as the Barra Brava. Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, the mayor of Buenos Aires, blamed them and described them as the “mafia of Argentine soccer”.

The violence had come a day after police raided the house of a Barra Brava leader. In the raid ten million Argentine Pesos (£207,285) and 300 tickets for the final had been confiscated.

Conmebol president Alejandro Dominguez met with the presidents of both clubs on Tuesday. After that meeting, a statement from South American football’s governing body Conmebol said a date and venue would be decided “as soon as possible”.

The first leg had finished 2-2 raising the stakes in what had been billed as the biggest club match in Argentine football history.

On Monday, the city government of Genoa wrote to both clubs offering to host the postponed match because of the role Genoese immigrants played in forming the two Argentine clubs. Boca are still nicknames the “Xeneizes” which is the local dialect for Genoese because of those roots.

Paraguay and Brazil have also reportedly offered to hold the match.