Restoring Xeneize to glory will take more than firing and hiring

Just about the only thing Fernando Gago got right from his first – and, as it turns out, final – Superclásico at the Boca Juniors helm was his frank analysis of the match. “I got everything wrong today,” the coach reportedly told his players in the Monumental dressing room as they digested a 2-1 defeat to River Plate, a scoreline that masked just how far behind their arch-rivals the Xeneize had looked for most of 90 one-sided minutes. 

It was clear that he was living on borrowed time from that moment onwards: and Boca duly put him out of his misery on Tuesday by relieving Gago of his duties six months after taking over from Diego Martínez.

While there were few dissenting voices around the Boca universe once the news started to filter out early Tuesday morning, the situation remains a curious one. Gago leaves the Bombonera with his team sitting at the top of their Liga Profesional de Fútbol group and gearing up for the play-offs, with eight wins in the last 10 games and with the much-anticipated Club World Cup barely a month and a half away.

Objectively, the ex-Aldosivi and Racing Club boss looked in good shape, with a team finally responding to his commands on the touchline and getting results even with star striker Edinson Cavani struggling to find the net. But football rarely responds to pure logic, even less so around La Boca, and there was no escape for Gago as he became the latest victim of professional Xeneize headhunter Marcelo Gallardo, who has now seen seven Boca coaches come and go during his two spells on the Monumental bench.

It wasn’t just losing the Superclásico that sealed his fate. It wasn’t just losing the first ‘mustn’t-lose’ game Boca had faced since February’s catastrophic exit from the Copa Libertadores at the hands of Alianza Lima. No, what condemned the Gago era was the manner of defeat suffered at the weekend. Having finally succeeded in his quest to mould Boca into a coherent, dynamic team, the coach sold out at the first opportunity and paid the price.

It was Gago who made the decision to pack the Xeneize defence with five bodies, surrendering control of the game to their nemesis from the very first whistle. The coach decided that the erratic Marcos Rojo could hold the backline together from the middle while keeping his head, and that in his first Superclásico and after a spell of indifferent form Carlos Palacios could be trusted to inject movement and creativity almost single-handed into this static Boca line-up. 

Both gambles failed. Rojo came to the Monumental with a red ‘B’ standing out from his Red Sox cap but on the field was humbled by the sharper, hungrier River attack which ran him ragged. Palacios was all but anonymous from the moment he ‘shivered’ on the turf pre-game, an empty grandstanding gesture which only further exposed the Chilean as he fell flat. It is the kind of bone-headed provocation that this current Boca side engages in time and again, and a symptom of the malfunctioning club culture Gago was unable or unwilling to arrest: ignoring football’s most important maxim, that one must do their talking where it counts on the field.

Since taking over as Boca president Juan Román Riquelme has chopped and changed the man in charge while spending millions on new players. But that culture of cheap shots, of dubious intelligence and forethought, of defining success or failure purely by way of comparison with River, remains untouched and continues to hollow out this great football club. Sunday’s Clásico should have been within reach for Boca, with all the issues Gallardo himself has had making his expensively-assembled squad work as a unit; instead, thanks to Gago and Co. ‘El Muñeco’ now looks stronger than ever and ready once more to take on the world. 

Until Riquelme takes a long, honest look in the mirror and faces up to the real problems the club he presides over faces – slapdash recruitment, zero consistency or long-term thinking, a finger permanently on the self-destruct button – the challenge of restoring the glory days appears beyond even the most accomplished of coaches in world football.