Playing the "Superclasico", Trezeguet takes another step in a remarkable denouement to a career that brought him World Cup and European Championship winners' medals.
Six months after signing for River, he helped the team he supported growing up in Buenos Aires win the Primera B Nacional championship in June, ending the trauma of their relegation a year earlier.
Trezeguet, now team captain, flew into Buenos Aires on Thursday from Monaco where he spent a few days with his children, dealt with some personal issues and trained at his former French club's La Turbie grounds overlooking the Mediterranean.
"I'm starting to feel the climate [of the Superclasico]," Trezeguet told reporters on arrival as he headed for River's afternoon practice at their training grounds near Ezeiza airport.
He missed last weekend's 1-0 defeat at Quilmes that clouded River's build up to Sunday's clash at the Monumental after they had chalked up two successive high-scoring wins.
'KEY MATCH'
Trezeguet's opposite number in the Boca side is burly, shaven headed Uruguayan striker Santiago "Tank" Silva, who will be looking for his fifth goal of the season and confidently predicted he would score the winner.
"Sunday's match is the key to show we can play well and pull out of this situation [of poor form]. I can see myself celebrating," Silva told a news conference on Wednesday.
There is far more than mere bragging rights at stake for the two coaches, River's young top flight debutant Matias Almeyda and grizzled veteran Julio Cesar Falcioni, who has become increasingly unpopular with the Boca fans.
Almeyda, a World Cup midfielder with Argentina in 1998 and 2002, has bitter memories of the last Superclasico in May 2011, a 2-0 defeat for River at Boca's La Bombonera in which he was red carded and left the field defiantly kissing the badge on his shirt.
