Boca Juniors defines the Copa Libertadores with an extra resource, penalties. The Argentinian team faces Fluminense of Brazil this Saturday in a final to which they reached without winning a single game in direct duels. Football literature in Argentina was nourished by great masters, but none of them, not even Roberto Fontanarrosa or Osvaldo Soriano, imagined a team that does not win games and still becomes champion. In what may be a new invention of Argentine football – a team without a win that wins the title – Boca Juniors was on the verge of making that paradox a reality, and not just in a minor, neighborhood tournament. The Argentinian club will lift the most coveted competition in South America with a dribble to the logic of sport if it first draws and then beats Brazil’s Fluminense in the penalty shootout for the final of the Copa Libertadores. The match that may earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records will be played this Saturday afternoon at the Maracanã, the stadium that the Rio de Janeiro club uses as its home for its country’s competitions.
