Injured midfielder as River Plate’s goalkeeper

are without an experienced goalkeeper for their battle against Independiente Santa Fe due to a Covid-19 outbreak.

20 of their players, including their recognised goalkeepers, are struggling with Covid-19, leaving the Argentinian club with only 10 fit players for their game in Group D.

Marcelo Gallardo

’s side will have to choose an outfield player to be their shot-stopper after their request for adding Alan Leonardo Diaz and Agustin Gomez was turned down by the governing body.

Enzo Perez

, who is dealing with a hamstring injury, is going to stand in goal after a decision that raged

Rodolfo D’Onofrio

, the club president.

"

We would never have thought that they could make a decision of this type,"

D'Onofrio told

ESPN

. 

"We made a presentation where we perfectly clarified why we consider that the goalkeeper can be substituted at any time during the competition. 

"There is an article [in the competition's regulations] that talks about serious injury. We consider COVID as a serious injury.

"We have 18 outfield players and three goalkeepers. We put the 32 players with four professional goalkeepers, who were infected. What we ask is to replace them."

River are sitting second on the Group D table and Santa Fa are bottom as they earned only two point from four matches.

Argentina is the seventh country with the most active Covid-19 cases around the world and Colombia is 19th.

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