No matter how Boca Juniors' Copa Sudamericana opener turned out, perhaps the Xeneize's greatest achievement was making the game in the first place.
A series of unfortunate events in Potosí ensured that Wednesday's clash would resemble something closer to adventure tourism than preparation for a potentially vital cup match against Nacional – a club whose badge is a delightfully bold-faced knock-off of none other than Boca's arch-rivals River Plate. First, with the Bolivian city's airport closed for renovations, the Boca squad were forced to land 150 kilometres away in the nation's administrative capital Sucre.
Then, Diego Martínez's men were unable to find hotel accommodation near the venue and bedded down in Sucre, making the trip the day of the game in a fleet of 4x4s (one of which broke down on the way) on a winding, perilous mountain road which claimed four lives just last Sunday when a coach lost control and crashed. And that, according to former footballer and TyC Sports panellist Brian Sarmiento, might not have been their only concern.
“When I finished my contract at Aurora, I continued working in Bolivia as a music producer and we had to make the drive from Sucre to Potosí,” the ex-Newell's star recalled. “We were going up the mountain at night because we were playing in Potosí. And I was told that on the way there is a cannibal tribe. Then of course we had a punctured tyre... we didn't have a tyre wrench and nobody would stop, because you really do get eaten. We eventually gave a guy one hundred dollars, he changed out the tyre faster than a Formula One pit crew and we could get on our way.”
Fortunately the Boca team made it unscathed and uneaten, and emerged from their opener with a 0-0 draw against Nacional. A perfectly acceptable result, given the difficulties of this away trip, Potosí's punishing 4,000-metre altitude which saps the strength of the fittest of players and Martínez's decision to heavily rotate his squad; but which could have been even sweeter had the Xeneize taken their chances, not least a missed penalty from Darío Benedetto just before half-time.
All things considered, it could have been a lot worse – just ask Sarmiento.
River too were left with a logistical headache to open their continental campaign, albeit not quite as extreme. Due to the current diplomatic spat between Argentina and Venezuela, the countries' airspaces are mutually closed off to one another – clearly an issue for a team planning to start the Copa Libertadores in San Cristóbal against Deportivo Táchira on Tuesday. River were obliged to land their charter jet in Cúcuta and drive across the Colombia-Venezuela border the night before the match, a grand total of 11 hours' travel.
Fortunately for Martín Demichelis' side, the game itself proved rather more straightforward. River finally pushed ahead just under 20 minutes from the end when Santiago Boselli opened the scoring – somewhat fortuitously, it must be said, after taking a Táchira clearance full in the face without knowing too much about it - and the defender's fellow Uruguayan Nicolás Fonseca put the game beyond doubt shortly after to seal a valuable 2-0 win.
It was another instance of River not exactly setting the world alight but doing just enough to take the points, a recurring theme in 2024; in such unusual circumstances it seems fitting to give Demichelis and his charges credit for another battling if slightly flat performance.
All in all, both Argentine sides will be satisfied with the outcome of their adventures this week, and happiest most of all in the knowledge that in a logistical sense, things will only get better.
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