That was quick. Apparently if you want a contract extension at Boca Juniors then the way you get it is by announcing you’re leaving the club, and then turning up again at the Casa Amarilla the next day to see what the response is. As a result of this strategy, Hugo Ibarra will now spend one more season at Boca before retiring in twelve months’ time. ‘General manager’ Carlos Bianchi, meanwhile, almost resigned himself on Friday. What’s going on?!
‘I didn’t want to leave like this,’ Ibarra told the Argentine press on announcing his failure to reach agreement on the terms of a new contract at Boca. In the end though, he hasn’t done. His family entreated him to end his career at the club he’s had so much success with, general manager Carlos Bianchi stated that he didn’t want to see Ibarra go yet, and Juan Román Riquelme said some words which actually helped his team, for once, making a phone call to convince his friend to stay. Alfio Basile will be happy – not that the Boca manager has been mentioned at all on a frantic day of transfer headlines at La Bombonera.
Bianchi announced the news to the press and was back in front of the microphones later on to confirm the signings of Federico Insúa from Club América de México (he’ll wear the number 11 shirt, his old #10 having been taken by Riquelme) and Uruguayan defender Adrián Gunino from Danubio. The real news from that speech, though, was that Bianchi’s finally explained to everyone what exactly he does at Boca. ‘Although a lot of people say I don’t do anything, today I got up at 6:30 to close the loan of [Gabriel] Paletta to Italy, because it was 11:30 over there. That challenge is something new to me and I enjoy it.’
He did, though, also reveal that in his first six months as ‘manager’ at Boca – the first man to hold the post, which appeared at the time to have been created specifically as a way of getting the board some good publicity by bringing Bianchi back in some capacity – he’d thought numerous times about leaving the job. ‘I didn’t leave because I have an agreement with Boca and with the president. The motives? There are plenty…’ Among them he cited the lack of daily training ground work and the less tangible ‘immediate’ rewards for a job well done. Bianchi might leave at the end of this year, even though he says he has ‘another two or three years more’ after that. A remarkably honest statement – or is he just following the Hugo Ibarra school of contract negotiation?
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Hmmmm…weird words from Bianchi and you have to wonder if he is really cut out for that kind of job.
Welcome back Hugo. Probably at lesser pay. I gotta say it, I hope this doesn’t mean he is going to start every match. Time to bring along someone else.