Racing, dead last, hosts a Sarmiento side that hasn't lost to them in eight years

Racing Club has never beaten Sarmiento in their last eight meetings: four draws, four away wins, and a lopsided 6-2 aggregate score. That stat alone carries weight before a ball is even kicked at the Cilindro in Avellaneda, but something else weighs even more: Racing sits dead last in the standings, with just 5 points from 9 games played, and arrives needing to turn around a situation that currently has it against the ropes.

The home side comes into this on a brutal run: in its last five matches it managed one win, one draw, and three losses. So far this tournament it has won just 1 of 9, scoring 8 goals and conceding 15, a minus-7 goal difference that tells most of the story. Sarmiento, meanwhile, arrives as the runner-up in Group B with 16 points, just two behind leaders Argentinos Juniors, and with a positive goal difference of plus-3. Its recent form backs that up too: three wins, one draw, and one loss in its last five. The gap between the two sides in the table stands at 11 points, which already makes clear the difference in momentum between them.

A clarification is in order regarding each team's numbers in their usual conditions, since that's a separate sample and shouldn't be confused with their overall tournament record: at home in this same 2026 Primera División season, Racing averages 1.006 goals scored and 1.006 goals conceded per game across 7 matches, with clean sheets in just 29% of them. Sarmiento, on the road, shows an even harsher picture: 0.5 goals scored and 1.76 conceded per game across 8 matches, without a single clean sheet. These are trends, not a forecast for this specific matchup, but they help frame the context.

Probable lineups

With medium reliability, Racing would take the field with Facundo Cambeses in goal; a back four of Ezequiel Cannavo, Ignacio Rodríguez, Marcos Rojo, and Mateo Martínez; Ulises Ortegoza, Leonel Pérez, Matko Miljevic, and Gastón Lodico in midfield; and up top, Tomás Conechny alongside Adrián Martínez, who is in fact the home team's top scorer in the trends sample with 4 goals.

Sarmiento, with a higher-reliability lineup, would field Thyago Ayala between the posts; Renzo Orihuela, Juan Insaurralde, Santiago Salle, and Lucas Suárez across the back; Mauricio Martínez, Julián Mavilla, Cristian Zabala, and Julián Contrera in midfield; and up front the duo of Junior Marabel (the away sample's top scorer, with 6 goals) and Jonathan Herrera.

What the numbers say

Our model, built on the season's trends, gives Racing a clear edge despite its current form, though not an overwhelming one:

Expected goals also favor the home side: 1.61 against Sarmiento's 0.80, for an estimated total of 2.42. These are our own projections, not a betting line, and should be taken with caution: the probability of more than 2.5 goals sits at 39%, and the chance of both teams scoring comes in at 27%, two figures suggesting a game that might not be especially high scoring or open.

Racing needs points to start pulling away from the bottom of the table; Sarmiento needs to keep up the pace that has it fighting near the top of Group B. History favors the visitors, so does the table, but the model reckons that playing at the Cilindro carries its own weight. We'll see if that's enough this time.