Marked for Facundo Quiroga
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad17 Apr 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Álvaro Montero
109 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Boca Juniors lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings17 Apr 2028
Successful dribbles: 36. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Match17 Apr 2028
Boca Juniors refuse to drop out of the race
Position 2, 22 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
The dugout17 Apr 2028
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Match15 Apr 2028
Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 10 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Words at Boca Juniors training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Milton Delgado is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Ayrton Costa and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match15 Apr 2028
0‑1 to San Lorenzo, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Boardroom17 Apr 2028
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match19 Feb 2028
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 85th, and Deportivo Riestra spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Player ratings21 Feb 2028
Two goals and a mark of 8.41 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad21 Feb 2028
31 days out for Joaquín Ferreyra after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Boca Juniors will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The dugout21 Feb 2028
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Boca Juniors have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad21 Feb 2028
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Milton Delgado was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad21 Feb 2028
Ayrton Costa and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match19 Feb 2028
It finished 2‑1, and it was Ignacio Rodríguez’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Boca Juniors.
The terraces21 Feb 2028
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Player ratings21 Feb 2028
Ninety minutes of Milton Delgado at his very best
Marked 8.08. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Boca Juniors.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match17 Nov 2027
1‑0 settles it, and a club that spent a season earning the right to play these games has won one of them. Somebody else's season ended tonight, which is the part nobody mentions in the celebrations.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Adam Bareiro breaks a bone — 46 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 46 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Match17 Nov 2027
Juan Ramírez wins it after the whistle should have gone
97 minutes played. Juan Ramírez found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Rosario Central went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Match22 Nov 2027
Boca Juniors are in among the leaders
Position 3 and 27 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Lautaro Di Lollo and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The terraces22 Nov 2027
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Facundo Herrera has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Market22 Nov 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Mateo Campos is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market22 Nov 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Juan Martín Núñez has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.