By the numbers, Boca are no longer what they once were in Brazil | OneFootball

Boca lost by the narrowest of margins to Cruzeiro at the Mineirão in the third matchday of the Copa Libertadores group stage. The Belo Horizonte side ended the Claudio Úbeda team’s 14-match unbeaten run and also extended its poor streak on Brazilian soil: it has now gone ten matches without a win there in international competitions, the worst run in its history.

Xeneize played the entire second half under difficult circumstances following the controversial sending-off of Paraguayan striker Adam Bareiro, who was shown two yellow cards in the space of five minutes near the end of the first half. The match became an uphill battle for the Argentine side, which felt hard done by by Uruguayan referee Esteban Ostojich, whose decisions changed the course of the game and forced it to drop several yards deeper to defend against the home side’s attacks.

When everything suggested that the team from La Ribera would take away a valuable point on the road against the strongest rival in its group, with less than ten minutes remaining, Néiser Villarreal got in behind the defenders and scored the winning goal, extending Boca’s agony to ten matches without a win in Brazil.

As one of the continent’s giants and having won its last two Libertadores titles on Brazilian soil, Xeneize earned the respect of the neighboring country. However, the recent trend has seen it suffer one blow after another, to the point of recording the worst winless streak in Brazil in its history.

The last time was six years ago, when in the 2020 edition of the continent’s top competition it claimed a 1-0 win over Internacional de Porto Alegre at Beira-Rio Stadium in the first leg of the round of 16, thanks to a goal by Carlos Tevez. Football fans will remember that night because it came just days after Diego Maradona’s death, and the Apache paid tribute to No. 10 by wearing a shirt from 1981.

From that night in the middle of the pandemic to the present, Boca has visited Santos, Atlético Mineiro, Corinthians, Palmeiras, Fluminense -it faced them at the Maracanã in the Libertadores final- and Fortaleza, in a string of disappointments that deepened its elusive run in Brazil, surpassing the 8 away matches without a win it recorded between 1993 and 1997.

It is worth noting that in 2023 it reached the Libertadores final by eliminating Palmeiras at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, but the match ended 1-1 and, after the tie in the series, qualification was ultimately decided on penalties.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.