Riquelme still plays: Villarreal invited him to participate in a friendly match with other legends of the club

While Hugh Ibarra and his team are still enjoying another Olympic round after winning the Argentine Super Cup, in Boca Predio Work is underway for Monday night’s match at La Bombonera (with a special reception to celebrate another title) against fierce rivals in this professional league, Defensa y Justicia. However, in the bowels of the club we are moving towards a year that will be crossed by elections, but also by agreements close to closure.

In this scenario, Juan Román Riquelme has been formally invited by Villarreal, who will organize for his centenary a match of the legends against the Spanish national team on March 25 at the La Cerámica stadium. An institution in which he played 145 games, scored 45 goals and provided 49 assists as the club went from being a modest side in Spain to reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League. There, like at Boca, he is an idol. And that’s why he’s seriously thinking about putting his shorts back on to take the field and return to play in that tribute for which he was invited along with other former teammates.

The appointment also coincides with the FIFA date on which the various teams will play friendlies. But also with the draw for the Copa Libertadores in Asunción, a place where he was also invited and with which, through connections, he could come from Spain to accompany the president Jorge Ameal and the general secretary, Ricardo Rosica.

Because the idea is to travel to Europe not just to play for Villarreal: Riquelme knows that the World Cup has opened the eyes of the football planet to young Argentines and that proposals will arrive from all over the mid-year transfer market by Alan Varela, Ezequiel Fernández, Luca Langoni, Valentín Barco and also Luis Vázquez, just to name a few of the Boca Predio guys who have been promoted in this period and who already had polls from different sides. Mateo Retegui also has the possibility of emigrating to Europe and Boca still retains 50 percent of the pass (the other half must be paid by Tigre at 2.5 million dollars). If Román flies, it will be to play on and off the pitch, now in his new management role.

This invitation also goes hand in hand with a series of offers that Boca has been receiving recently for various tours that could not take place due to the pandemic and which were subsequently rejected due to the compression of the calendar. Now even from below it slips that one (or both?) pending finals against River could be sold abroad: Miami, Arabia and Qatar are some of the destinations mentioned. China too, although its distance would upset plans to do so in mid-season and again it would be postponed to the end of the year or early 2024.

But while these movements await, Boca has already immediately agreed on a new sponsor for its shirt (the DirecTV signal) in exchange for 2.5 million dollars for three seasons and is deciding which brand will keep the central sponsorship in the central band of the shirt : Codere (Spain) and Esportes da Sorte (Brazil) are two betting houses looking for that site, in exchange for 5 million dollars per season.

For now, it is the clubs that aim the most, while a surplus of millions of pesos is being prepared in the club’s treasury for six months, but with work planned in Boca Predio to expand the structures: will they start building the concentration there? For now, small “dormis” have been made so that there is rest for the players of the Reserve, similar to those that already exist in Casa Amarilla. It’s that they’ve already won 6 titles in less than 4 years (they won the same titles under the previous management in 8 and far surpassed the first 4 years at Mauricio Macri’s club) and now they’ll aim to grow in other areas as well.