The remarkable decline of Boca Juniors

Martín Palermo holding the 2007 Copa Libertadores

Back in 2007 Boca Juniors were undoubtedly at the very pinnacle of South American football. Coach Miguel Angel Russo had just led them to their fourth Copa Libertadores in eight years. The team that demolished Brazilian side Grêmio over the two legged final included players like Ever Banega, Neri Cardoza, Claudio Morel Rodrígauz, Rodrigo Palacio, Juan Román Riquelme and Martín Palermo.

Few would have predicted then that within four years a team shorn of all but the last two names would find themselves way down in 17th place in the early stages of the Clausura 2011 tornament having finished in 11th 16th and 11th in their last three campaigns or that they would be so far away from even achieving qualification to play in the international tournaments they utterly dominated for the best part of a decade.

The decline was not instantaneous, they won the Apertura and the Recopa Sudamericana in 2008 but the downwards trajectory since then has been unmissable. People can point to many factors to explain what has happened and everyone in Argentina has an opinion.

It is clear that the current team has suffered from the facts that Riquelme has barely played in two years after developing legs of glass and talismanic goalscorer Martín Palermo has struggled to find his goalscoring touch and lost all of the little pace that he had back in 2007. It is also clear that the club has suffered from unprecedented managerial turmoil, with eight managerial changes since Russo's departure in 2007. the rate of managerial changes has increased to such a rate that the position has changed hands five times since the beginning of 2010.

Julio César Falcioni is the latest manager
to try to turn things around at Boca.

After current manager Julio Cesar Falcioni was installed I predicted that one of his biggest challenges would come were he to consider dropping ageing club legends like Riquelme and Palermo. The Riquelmegate storm that arose when Falcioni left a fit and willing Riquelme out of the team to play All Boys in the third round of the Clausura confirmed my predictions. The fans quite clearly have more loyalty to the players that served the club through the most successful period in their history than to a new manager that many are still sceptical about.

To me Falcioni was an odd choice of manager for a club like Boca Juniors, but he does seem to have the pragmatic attitude necessary to begin to rebuild confidence at the Bombonera but the board and the fans would have to dramatically lower their expectations in order to give him the time to succeed, something they refused to do for the previous "permanent" manager Claudio Borghi who was shown the door after only fourteen games of the Apertura last year.

It is obviously impossible to attribute such a decline to one factor but for me the biggest contributor to the situation the club find themselves in is the lack of squad stability. Their grandstand enganche Riquelme has been injured or out of form for the past couple of seasons but for me the really big issue is that the majority of the players from 2007 have departed and the academy and transfer policy have not bought in adequate replacements. As the club's achievements have slipped further and further away from expectations the turnover of players has become even more frantic than the turnover of coaching staff. In their game against Vélez Sársfield at the beginning of March this year only two players remained from the team that played Vélez a little over a year ago.

18 year old Ever Banega was one of the revelations of
Copa Libertadores 2007.

For me the most significant departure amongst many since Boca Juniors lifted the Libertadores in 2007 was that of the 19 year old midfielder Ever Banega who joined Valencia for a reported fee of $18 million. I remember thinking at the time that he was leaving "too soon" and that the benefits to both club and player of staying for another couple of seasons would have been immense. However the reported fee was so high that Boca almost had to cash their chips and take the huge sum on offer for a teenager with only 40 odd games worth of first team experience and no goals, given the possibility that he could subsequently have suffered a career threatening injury or dip in form at any time.

As it is the decision to take the cash has not been great for either party, Banega didn't really establish himself at Valencia, spent a season on loan at Atlético Madrid and then began to make a positive impression in a struggling team after his recall to Valencia in 2009. Playing well in underachieving sides was not enough for him to find his way into Diego Maradona's 2010 World Cup squad, an omission criticised as one of Maradona's worst by myself and other respected South American football commentators.

Had Banega stayed in Argentina for another couple of years and continued to improve on the form he showed as an 18 year old back in 2007 in the blue and gold of Boca Juniors he would probably have benefited from much more big game experience than as a bit part player for two underachieving sides overseas.

How could Maradona have left him out of the World Cup squad had he been the most obvious star of the one team that Diego could never have ignored? Had Banega played in that notorious game against Germany, Mascherano would not have been the only engine in the middle of the park and the team could possibly have avoided their most humiliating World Cup exit since they failed to qualify for World Cup 1970.

Returning to the plight of Boca Juniors, they have not even qualified to play in the last two Copa Libertadores and given their poor start to the Clausura they seem very unlikely to even qualify for this year's much derided Copa Sudamericana  that they won back-to-back in 2004 and 2005. As I have said, Banega's sale was one factor amongst many in this decline, however it is illustrative of how the voracious appetites for young Argentine talent in Europe and Mexico is now so powerful that it can even bring giants to their knees.

Rise of the interior?

The Godoy Cruz players celebrating their first ever
appearance in the Copa Libertadores.

When Argentine side Godoy Cruz made their international début in the 2011 Copa Libertadores with a 2-1 win against 2008 champions Liga de Quito in group 8 it was a historic moment for football fans in Mendoza Province. Not only were Godoy Cruz the first team from the sparsely populated province that stretches from the heights of the Andes in the west to the Cuyo plains in the east to feature in a Libertadores game, it was the first time that Argentina has been represented in South America's premier club competition by an indirectly affiliated side (from outside of the traditional triopoly of Argentine football Buenos Aires City, Buenos Aires Province & Santa Fe Province).


The most joyful thing about their achievement is that they managed to qualify for the Libertadores without sacrificing their style of play. Throughout the 2010 Apertura Godoy Cruz were one of the most entertaining and unpredictable teams to watch. They only managed to win three of their ten home games but had the third best away record behind the runaway top two of Estudiantes and Vélez Sarsfield. Their nineteen games featured fifty seven goals, an average of three per game, so if you judge entertainment by the number of goals per game they were by far the most entertaining team to watch in the Apertura.


The most impressive thing about their achievement is that they managed to finish as the fourth most consistent Argentine team in 2010 in only their fourth season in the top flight. They made their Primera División debut in 2006-07 but were relegated at the end of the season thanks to the notorious promedios (points averaging) system. They bounced straight back and in 2008-09 they secured their top flight status. At the end of the 2009-10 season Atlético Tucumán were relegated meaning that Godoy Cruz were the only remaining team in the Argentine top flight from the non-traditional provinces.

No team from outside the three traditional heartlands of Argentine football has ever won the Argentine league, the closest that any of the indirectly affiliated  teams have ever come were the two Córdoba based sides Talleres and Racing that finished as runners up more than thirty years ago. Talleres appeared in the final of the 1977 Nacional but were beaten by Independiente, and three years later Racing lost the final of the Nacional to Rosario Central.

In 1999 Talleres de Córdoba became the first side
from outside of the three traditional heartlands of
Argentine football to win a major honour.

In 1999 Talleres became the first indirectly affiliated side ever to win a major honour when they won the last edition of the defunct Copa Conmebol but fortunes have not been kind to them in the intervening twelve years, they were relegated from the Primera División in 2004 despite a 3rd place finish and in 2009 they were relegated from the Argentine 2nd division to join city rivals Racing Club in the regionalised third division, Torneo Argentino A.

Clubs that face relegation out of the top two tiers of Argentine football face very different challenges, indirectly affiliated teams from the interior face the notoriously difficult challenge of adjusting to life in the regional leagues. Argentino A currently has 25 teams with only one automatic promotion spot available, Argentino B has 48 teams and relegation to Argentino C means a battle against more than 250 other teams to secure one of the few promotion places. Directly affiliated teams from Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Province & Santa Fe Province drop down into the Metropolitana structure which is a further three tiers of standard leagues with only one relegation spot at the bottom. In recent years Tigre and All Boys have achieved the double promotion necessary to find their way back from the Metropolitana to the Primera División.


Several indirectly affiliated teams from the interior that once played at the highest level of Argentine football have disappeared almost without trace into the labyrinthine structure of Argentino C, a couple of the most notable examples being Altos Hornos Zapla who played with the best in the 1970s and Huracán de Corrientes who featured at the highest level as recently as the 1990s.

It is no surprise that the top clubs come from the most heavily populated areas, the same can be said for most countries. In Uruguay eleven out of the twelve top flight teams come from the capital Montevideo, it is nowhere near as extreme in Argentina but fourteen of the twenty Primera División sides come from greater Buenos Aires and of the remaining six, four come from the large conurbation of La Plata and the heavily populated Santa Fe Province. The remaining two teams are Olimpo from the Atlantic coast of Buenos Aires Province and Godoy Cruz from Mendoza.

Huracán de Corrientes have disappeared into obscurity
after playing at the highest level of Argentine football
as recently as the 1990's

As it stands, four of the six non-Buenos Aires based teams are pretty much immune from relegation, the other two, Olimpo and Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata are embroiled in the relegation fight but still capable of escaping the drop zone, meaning that as many as four Buenos Aires based sides could find themselves relegated at the end of the season. The relegated teams are almost certain  to be replaced by teams from the interior given that eleven of the top twelve sides in the second division come from the interior and the other team is Aldosivi from the Atlantic coast of Buenos Aires Province.

Of the eleven "interior" teams chasing promotion the most famous are four time Argentine champions Rosario Central who suffered relegation from the Primera División last season after losing a playoff against All Boys. Other notable teams in the promotion chase are Unión de Santa Fe who were runners up in the Nacional championship in 1979, Gimnasia de Jujuy who are historically the most successful team from the far north of Argentina and Atlético Rafaela who have missed out on promotion in the last two seasons after failing to beat Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata in playoff games.

The recent success of Godoy Cruz and the host of teams from the interior vying for promotion shows that football is alive and kicking in the Argentine interior, however there remain some real concerns about football in the indirectly affiliated provinces of Argentina. The main problem is that even though they are doing brilliantly by themselves Godoy Cruz are the only representatives of the 21 non-traditional provinces currently playing in the top flight. Another concern is that C.A.I. from Comodoro Rivadavia, the only team from the southern provinces playing at the national level look certain to be relegated to the regional leagues at the end of the season.

In their second Copa Libertadores fixture Godoy Cruz suffered a 1-3 home defeat against Uruguayan Libertadores veterans Peñarol. It was a poor result in front of their own fans but they can take comfort in the fact that they have had an incredibly good away record over the last year and if they can find some points away from home in the Libertadores they will still have a good chance of making it out of the toughest of the eight groups to reach the knock-out stages. Fans from all over Argentina will be behind them because at best they represent hope that success can be decentralised in Argentine football and at worst people will cheer them on because nobody knows how long it will be before another team from the backwaters of Argentine football will break the dominance of the Buenos Aires/La Plata/Santa Fe Province triopoly in order to have a tilt at the most prestigious trophy in South American club football.

Borghi resigns after Superclásico defeat

Borghi's reign as Boca Juniors manager only lasted 14 games.

After defeat in the Superclásico on 16 November 2010 Boca Juniors manager Claudio Borghi has resigned. Sources claim that he told the players in the dressing room after the game that he would resign his position, he then left the stadium without speaking to the press.

A press conference was arranged at Boca Juniors Bombonera stadium for the following day, where the official announcement was made. It is claimed that Borghi was told not to officially resign in the stadium of Boca's arch rivals River Plate and to wait until it could be done in a less humiliating location.

The general perception was that Borghi would not be able to survive defeat in the Superclásico derby and after former Boca Juniors defender Jonathan Maidana headed the only goal of the game to give River Plate their first league win in Argentina's biggest derby game since 2007 Borghi felt that he had no option but to resign.

Borghi is the 8th Primera División manager to leave his position in the first 14 games of the Apertura 2010 tournament. His departure was preceded by that of Luis Zubeldía of Lanús and Angel Cappa of River Plate.

Borghi may now be regretting his decision to allow Boca Juniors to poach him from Argentinos Juniors after he led them to the Clausura 2010 championship. Had he stayed with Argentinos he would certainly have had the capital to survive a poor run of form and the club are already qualified for the Copa Libertadores 2011 which is due to kick off in February.

it is inconceivable that Borghi will be out of work for long with his track record. He four league titles in Chile with Colo-Colo and led Argentinos Juniors to their first league championship in since 1985 when he was in the team.

Borghi leaves Boca Juniors in a dismal position, they are 15th in the league table and unable to qualify for the Copa Libertadores for the 2nd season in a row which is unacceptable for a club that have utterly dominated South America's top international club tournament over the last decade.

Rumours are already circulating about potential replacements, however the job may be a poisoned chalice with the level of expectation and a team that seem incapable of regaining the form that saw them win 18 major trophies between 1998 and 2008.

Apertura 2010: Managerial departures

• Daniel Garnero (Independiente) Fecha 7
• Héctor Rivoira (Huracán) Fecha 7
• Antonio Mohamed (Colón) Fecha 7
• Diego Cocco (Gimnasia y Esgrima) Fecha 8
• Hugo Tocalli (Quilmes) Fecha 11
• Angel Cappa (River Plate) Fecha 13
• Luis Zubeldía (Lanús) Fecha 14
• Claudio Borghi (Boca Juniors) Fecha 14

Cappa sacked as River Plate manager.

Angel Cappa left 33 time league champions River Plate
after a run of 7 league games without a win.

Following River Plate's 1-0 defeat against newly promoted side All Boys their manager Angel Cappa has been sacked. This was River Plate's 7th game in a row without a win and the decision was not unexpected given the trigger happy nature of most South American clubs and River Plate's unprecedented proximity to the automatic relegation zone.

The sacking cannot detract from the amazing result on Sunday evening when All Boys beat one of the giants of Argentine football in their first season after emerging from a 30 year exile in the lower leagues of Argentine football.

Cappa knew that he was taking on a tough task when he accepted the job in April because River Plate were certain to end up in the relegation dogfight this season after 2 consecutive poor seasons had dragged them down to the bottom position amongst the 17 teams that remained in the division at the end of last season. River had recovered from a 1-5 tonking on their own pitch by minnows Tigre on the last day of Clausura 2010 to make a positive start to the Apertura tournament winning four of their opening six games. They looked so good that even respected football journalists talked about them as potential champions.

Things changed for the team after a well fought 1-0 away defeat to Newell's Old Boys, they went on a streak of 5 draws in five games when averaging one point per game is not an option. They were meant to face eternal rivals Boca Juniors in the Superclásico last weekend but the fixture was postponed after the death of former President Néstor Kirchner.

Boca Juniors are also experiencing a massive slump in form and a win for River Plate in the derby game could have given Cappa enough capital to survive an unexpected defeat in the following game. However as it stands the biggest game in Argentine football didn't happen and River Plate are now in deep trouble. Newly promoted Olimpo de Bahía Blanca have recovered from their early season jitters to launch a realistic survival bid, winning two of their last three games. Another couple of wins for Olimpo could drop either Gimnasia de La Plata or River Plate into the automatic relegation places. It would be totally unacceptable for one of the three remaining never-relegated sides (the other two being Boca Juniors & Independiente) to find themselves in such a position.

Angel Cappa had managed a number of clubs before River Plate without much success. He won much acclaim when his Húracan side featuring the young talents of Javier Pastore and Matiás Defederico and elegant midfielder  Mario Bolatti came heartbreakingly close to winning the Clausura 2009 on a foundation of exhilarating attacking football only to be cruelly beaten in an extraordinary game on the last day of the season.

Despite the fact that he parted company with Huracán after a run of poor results after the loss of his 3 key players he was given the chance to manage the most successful team in the history of Argentine domestic football. Questions were asked at the time, about Huracán's poor run of form, the fact that he had never won a major trophy and about whether exhilarating attacking football is the best way to ease relegation concerns. The answers were reasonable, Huracán lost their 3 best players and Cappa would not have his River Plate  squad decimated, that for the first time in decades River Plate's main priority would be survival not silverware and that there is nothing wrong with pacey attacking football if the defence functions too.

Cappa was sacked by River Plate President Daniel Passarella who is no stranger to managerial departures; he was on the other side of the situation only 3 years ago when he had no choice but to resign as manager after his River Plate team were humiliatingly knocked out of the Copa Sudamericana by Argentine minnows Arsenal de Sarandí at the semi-final stage.

In his defence, Cappa had only been in charge of the club for 18 games and was in the process of rebuilding the team in his own style. He had secured half of the available points during his tenure, a massive improvement on the disastrous run of results amassed by Diego Simeone and Néstor Gorosito before him. Had River Plate continued to get 1.5 points per game until the end the season they would have had a very good chance of survival

Speculation has already begun about potential replacement's the favourites being Américo Gallego (only the 2nd manager ever to win the Argentine league with 3 different clubs after José Yudica) and Nery Pumpido (who famously led Paraguayan side Olimpia to their 3rd Copa Libertadores title). The outside candidate is unorthodox manager Marcelo Bielsa who recently resigned as the manager of the Chile national team.