The preparation of the Betplay League teams in the second semester is already underway by several national teams. One of the teams that added a new signing in the last few hours is América de Cali, which added Éder Álvarez Balanta, a defender with extensive experience in international football.
The announcement was confirmed by América de Cali’s X account in the evening, finalizing and confirming the reports of several sports journalists throughout the week about the arrival of the Bogotá center back.
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“Welcome to the Passion of a People! Eder Álvarez Balanta joins to reinforce the scarlet midfield, the player, trained at River Plate in Argentina and with extensive travel through the Old Continent, has stood out in Basel (Switzerland), Schalke 04 (Germany) and Bruges (Belgium). First time playing in Colombia, Éder?” This was the official tweet from Rojo Valle del Cauca that occurred at night, making the signing of the central defender official.
The Colombian center back’s career began in 2013 when he was in the River Plate youth team. From there he gained prominence as time went by and the millionaire team had the opportunity to take him to the professional team.
The debut of Eder Alvarez Balanta It was on April 7, 2013 in a 2-0 victory against Racing de Avellaneda, led at that time by Ramón Díaz, at that time, the Colombian played the entire game and began to write his career at a professional level.
Álvarez Balanta played a total of sixty games during his time with the Rioplatense team and scored two goals. From there, he made the jump to European football, reaching the Basel, Switzerlandwhere he played 58 games and scored three goals.
Finally, the player landed in the Belgian League, this time defending the colors of the Club Bruges. There he achieved the figure of one hundred games (with the exception that he was on loan in the Schalke 04 from Germany only playing six games in the 2022-2023 season) from 2019 to the present.
Likewise, within the Colombian central defender’s career it is important to say that he won a total of 10 titles with River Plate (among which stand out internationally: Copa Sudamericana 2014, Copa Libertadores 2015, Recopa Sudamericana 2015 and the Runner-up of the 2015 Club World Cup and at the local level the Argentine championship in the period of 2013-2014 twice).
In Europe, his career was also notable for being full of achievements, winning the Belgian League four times (2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2023-2024) and the Super Cup twice (2021-2022, 2022-2023) and the Swiss Super League (2016-2017) and the Swiss Cup twice (2016-2017, 2018-2019)
The Red Devils They will play their first preseason friendly on June 27 at 7:00 pm against El Nacional of Ecuador at the Atahualpa Olympic Stadium in Quito. Subsequently, those led by the Uruguayan coach Jorge Moth da Silva They will travel to Mexico City to play against Cruz Azul of Mexico who has the Colombian goalkeeper Kevin Mier and the central one Willer Ditta in their ranks. This second and last game that the Vallecaucanos will have will be on June 29 at 10:00 pm at the Ciudad de los Deportes stadium in the Federal District of Mexico.
These are the 21 players called up for América de Cali’s tour of friendly matches:
