The Fall of the Superclásico, Pt. 2: The Dilemma for Boca Juniors | OneFootball

Continuing our series that examines the struggles faced by both teams in one of the world’s biggest rivalries, we now turn to Boca Juniors, and the club’s turn since an iconic figure became its president. 

Yesterday, we took a look at how River Plate’s enormous spending over the past few seasons has yet to produce any results. But whereas Los Millonarios’ issues lie fiscally, Boca Juniors’ are different.

On the blue side of Buenos Aires, the problems are closely tied to the leadership of one man: club legend turned president Juan Román Riquelme.

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Riquelme entered Boca politics in late 2019 after joining Jorge Amor Ameal’s opposition ticket. He became vice president and head of football operations, eventually winning the presidency in December 2023.

His victory was decisive, defeating Andrés Ibarra by a large margin in one of the largest club elections in football history.

His record as a football executive was actually highly successful by domestic standards. Boca won six domestic titles during the period in which Riquelme was running the football department, including the 2019-20 Superliga, the Copa Diego Maradona, the Copa Argentina, the 2022 Copa de la Liga, the 2022 Liga Profesional and the 2023 Supercopa Argentina.

The transition to club president, however, has been much more difficult.

Since taking full control of the institution, Riquelme has overseen repeated managerial changes and a team that has struggled to establish a consistent identity.

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The coaching carousel has included names like Fernando Gago, Miguel Ángel Russo, Claudio Úbeda, and current manager Rodolfo Arruabarrena, who returned for a second stint in charge of the club in June 2026.

The constant turnover has become one of the clearest symbols of Boca’s instability.

In addition to a myriad of coaches, there’s been plenty of expensive players as well, including former FC Dallas Designated Player Alan Velasco, Brian Aguirre, Kevin Zenón, Milton Giménez, and Tomás Belmonte. Velasco alone cost Boca close to $10 million, making him one of the club’s most significant recent investments.

Yet, like River, Boca’s problem is not simply how much money has been spent, it is what that money has produced.

The club’s expensive signings have struggled to establish themselves as the foundation of a championship team, while the constant changes in coaching have prevented Boca from developing continuity.

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Edinson Cavani is perhaps the clearest example of the problem.

The Uruguayan arrived as a global superstar and one of the greatest forwards of his generation. His signing created enormous excitement around the club, but injuries and inconsistent availability prevented him from becoming the transformative figure Boca expected.

Cavani eventually left the club in 2026 with 28 goals in 81 appearances and without winning a trophy during his Boca career.

For a club that historically excelled at turning veteran stars into decisive figures, Cavani’s spell became another example of how reputation alone cannot substitute for squad construction and sporting planning.

Institutional Problems

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The criticism of Riquelme extends beyond the team’s performances.

His leadership style has increasingly been described by critics as highly centralized, with significant decisions concentrated around his inner circle and the club’s Football Council, now since disbanded. Supporters who once viewed his control as a strength increasingly question whether the same model can function effectively in a modern football institution.

There have also been repeated complaints about Boca’s communication, marketing, and administrative processes.

One of the most damaging examples came in 2024, when Boca failed to properly meet the registration deadline for new signings in the Copa Sudamericana after misunderstanding the timing of the deadline. Riquelme himself acknowledged that the club had believed the deadline was later than it actually was.

For an institution as large as Boca, an administrative mistake of that magnitude was difficult to explain.

The broader criticism is that the club has increasingly prioritized loyalty and familiarity over professional expertise. Riquelme has surrounded himself with people he trusts, many of whom have strong connections to Boca’s footballing history, but critics argue that a modern football club also requires specialized executives in areas such as marketing, communications, finance, technology, and sporting operations.

That criticism has become particularly relevant because Riquelme’s greatest strength as a leader is also potentially his greatest weakness.

His enormous connection with Boca supporters gives him political power that few club presidents anywhere in the world can match. But the skills required to manage a modern football institution are very different from those required to control a midfield.

Riquelme was one of the greatest players in Boca’s history. That does not automatically make him a great football executive.

The growing frustration around the club suggests that an increasing number of supporters are beginning to make that distinction.

When Will Change Come?

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The biggest question now is whether either Boca Juniors or River Plate can reverse the direction in which they are heading.

River has already tried almost everything. The club replaced Marcelo Gallardo with Martín Demichelis, brought Gallardo back, invested heavily in the squad, changed its sporting structure, appointed a foreign sporting director and eventually hired Eduardo Coudet.

The club has also continued to spend enormous amounts of money on players.

What remains unclear is whether all of those moves form part of a coherent strategy or simply represent another attempt to find the next solution after the previous one failed.

That is the challenge facing River president Stefano Di Carlo and sporting director Pablo Longoria. Their jobs are no longer simply to find better players or another successful coach. They have to convince River supporters that there is a coherent reason behind the decisions being made.

That is where River’s political problem begins.

A growing section of the fanbase questions why the club needs to adopt European-style structures when River built its greatest modern successes through its own model. The argument is not necessarily against modernization itself, but against modernization without a clear connection to River’s historical identity.

For Boca, the problem is equally complicated.

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Arruabarrena has been given a long-term opportunity to stabilize the team, but the club’s problems are bigger than the identity of its manager. Boca needs to determine whether Riquelme’s highly centralized model can produce the professional sporting structure required to compete consistently at the highest level.

Riquelme remains enormously popular among significant portions of the Boca fanbase, but his presidency will ultimately be judged on whether that popularity can be transformed into sustainable sporting success.

The political pressure will only increase as the next election approaches. Every poor result gives his opponents more ammunition, while every successful run gives Riquelme another opportunity to argue that his model is still capable of working.

For now, neither argument has been settled.

The Rivalry Isn’t Dying, But Both Clubs are Losing Their Ways

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River Plate and Boca Juniors remain Argentina’s two biggest clubs. They remain the country’s biggest football brands, its most powerful fanbases and the centerpieces of what remains arguably the most famous rivalry in world football.

That is precisely why their current situations are so fascinating.

Neither club is poor. Neither club lacks supporters. Neither club lacks talent. Neither club lacks money. What both clubs appear to lack is clarity.

River has become a modern football business that is still trying to determine how that business should translate into sporting success. Boca has become increasingly dependent on the personality and political authority of its greatest modern idol while struggling to build the professional structure required to compete consistently at the highest level.

The irony is that the Superclásico itself may be stronger than ever as a global brand while the institutions behind it are struggling to live up to its reputation.

For decades, River and Boca represented two different versions of Argentine football. They represented competing philosophies, cultures and identities that constantly pushed each other forward. Their rivalry was not simply about which team won the next game; it was a competition between two enormous institutions attempting to define what Argentine football should look like.

Today, they are beginning to look strangely similar.

Both are spending more money, changing coaches more frequently and restructuring their institutions in search of an answer. Both are increasingly frustrated with their own sporting decisions, and both have supporters questioning whether their leadership understands the football environment they are now operating in.

That does not mean the Superclásico is dying. In fact, the opposite may be true. The rivalry remains powerful precisely because River and Boca are still capable of dominating the attention of an entire country whenever they meet.

But the rivalry’s future depends on the institutions behind it finding their way again.

River and Boca do not need to become what they were in the past. Argentine football has changed too much for that to be possible. What they need is to understand what they want to become next.

Until they do, the world’s greatest rivalry will continue to be defined not by the quality of the football on the pitch, but by the growing distance between the enormous potential of Argentina’s two biggest clubs and the results they are actually producing.