2024-01-14 00:09:00
Boca Juniors faces Gimnasia y Tiro de Salta this Saturday at the Padre Martearena Stadium in a friendly marked by the debut of Diego Martínez as coach of Xeneize added to the wait for the arrival of additions, after Cristian Lema is the only new face of the finalist team of the last Copa Libertadores.
In the midst of that search, Kevin Zenón’s name grew as the hours went by. The 22-year-old midfielder belonging to Unión de Santa Fe would be close to wearing Blue and Gold and his possible arrival was one of the questions asked by Raúl Cascini in a conversation with ESPN. Initially, the member of the Football Council tried to avoid the query: “It’s like the eighth or ninth that has already come to Boca, but well… We are happy with the squad we have.” When asked if there are negotiations for the midfielder, he expressed: “I repeat: we are very happy with the squad we have. Do I like it? Yes, they are all good players.”
In addition, he was consulted about the departure of Valentín Barco to Brighton in England in exchange for 10 million dollars: “What about Valentín is clear and everyone knows it. We wanted to renew it for four years at the time, he and his representative did not want to. They signed us for one year only with the condition of the clause, but they also have to know that, when what happened today happened, the clause is executed by the player. This was clearly done and signed by the player. “We have no choice but to do what happened.”
In this sense, he told about the frustrated attempts to extend the link with Boca Juniors, which expired at the end of 2024: “It was now. As soon as we started training we wanted to renew his contract back. We sat down with him and his representative and they told us that, two days later, they would come to answer us. When they came, it was with the signing of the clause. It was like this. We do not lie and we are on the right paths. It was that way.”
Valentín Barco was sold to Brighton
Against which, he left a singular phrase about the 19-year-old left back: “We wanted to renew him back for four more years, we wanted Valentín to continue growing in our club, to continue learning, but hey… Sometimes, you have to be grateful in life. “Things happened the way they happened.”
Beyond the departure of Colo, Cascini praised the efforts to maintain last year’s squad, after different polls by Nicolás Valentini, Cristian Medina or Marcos Rojo: “The most important thing and, perhaps, the most difficult is to maintain a squad, that we are achieving it. “We are talking about the team that reached the Copa Libertadores final, which is not easy at all.”
“We want to maintain the squad. It is not easy to reach the final of the Libertadores, and maintaining it is much more difficult in Argentine football. We see that in other places, and we are achieving it. It is good that our players are happy here,” he added.
Finally, he highlighted the first days of Diego Martínez as coach of the Ribera team: “We see that he is very committed to his thoughts. We are very happy with how the team works. Today we are going to have a friendly, I hope everything goes well, when I say that it means that we don’t have any injuries.” That last phrase sounded again with great intensity when Rojo left the warm-up with a physical discomfort.
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