River Plate

River Plate can refer to:

Copa Libertadores

The Copa Libertadores de América (Portuguese: Copa Libertadores da América) is an annual international club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 1960. It is one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world and the most prestigious club competition in Latin American football. The tournament is named in honor of the Libertadores (Spanish and Portuguese for liberators), the main leaders of the South American wars of independence, so a literal translation of its name into English would be "Liberators of America Cup".

It is sponsored by Bridgestone and is known as the Copa Bridgestone Libertadores. The competition has had several different formats over its lifetime. At the beginning, only the champions of the South American leagues participated. In 1966, the runners-up of the South American leagues began to join. In 1998, Mexican teams were invited to compete, and have contested regularly since 2000, when the tournament was expanded from 20 to 32 teams. Today at least three clubs per country compete in the tournament, while Argentina and Brazil each have five clubs participating. Traditionally, a group stage has always been used but the number of teams per group has varied several times.

Independiente Medellín

Deportivo Independiente Medellín, also known as DIM, is a professional Colombian football team based in Medellín, that currently plays in the Categoría Primera A. They play their home games at the Atanasio Girardot stadium.

Medellín has won the national league known as Categoría Primera A five times: in 1955, 1957, 2002-II, 2004-I and 2009-II. Its best performance at international level was in 2003, when the team achieved the third place in the Copa Libertadores de América.

Rivalries

Medellín's greatest rival is with the city's other major club Atlético Nacional, with whom they share the home stadium Atanasio Girardot. The team is dubbed "El Poderoso de la Montaña" or the powerful of the mountain due to Medellín's geographical location high in the Andean mountains. The rivalry is especially strong due to each team's main support club, Rexixtenxia Norte for Medellín and Los Del Sur for Atlético Nacional. The two clubs are named with the location that they occupy in the stadium where Rexixtenxia occupies the section behind the northern goal and Los Del Sur occupy the section behind the southern goal.

2017 Copa Libertadores

The 2017 Copa Libertadores de América (officially the 2017 Copa Bridgestone Libertadores for sponsorship reasons) will be the 58th edition of the Copa Libertadores de América, South America's premier club football tournament organized by CONMEBOL. The winner (or the best-placed team from South America if the winner is from Mexico) will play in the 2017 FIFA Club World Cup and the 2018 Recopa Sudamericana.

Teams

The following 38 teams from 11 associations (the 10 CONMEBOL member associations, plus Mexico from CONCACAF which were invited to compete) qualified for the tournament:

Among them, 12 teams (the team with the lowest berth from each of the 11 associations, plus the team with the second lowest berth from the association of the title holders) are entered in the first stage, and the remaining 26 teams are entered in the second stage.

Medellín

Medellín (Spanish pronunciation: [meðeˈʝin]), officially the Municipality of Medellín (Spanish: Municipio de Medellín), is the second-largest city in Colombia and the capital of the department of Antioquia. It is located in the Aburrá Valley, a central region of the Andes Mountains in South America. According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics, the city has an estimated population of 2.44 million as of 2014. With its surrounding area that includes nine other cities, the metropolitan area of Medellín is the second-largest urban agglomeration in Colombia in terms of population and economy, with more than 3.5 million people.

In 1616 the Spaniard Francisco Herrera Campuzano erected a small indigenous village ("poblado") known as "Saint Lawrence of Aburrá" (San Lorenzo de Aburrá), located in the present-day El Poblado commune. On 2 November 1675, the queen consort Mariana of Austria founded the "Town of Our Lady of Candelaria of Medellín" (Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Medellín) in the Aná region, which today corresponds to the center of the city (east-central zone) and first describes the region as "Medellín". In 1826, the city was named the capital of the Department of Antioquia by the National Congress of the nascent Republic of Gran Colombia, comprised by present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama. After Colombia won its independence from Spain, Medellín became the capital of the Federal State of Antioquia until 1888, with the proclamation of the Colombian Constitution of 1886. During the 19th century, Medellín was a dynamic commercial center, first exporting gold, then producing and exporting coffee.