On the right, the champion trophy. On the left, the award for the best most outstanding player of the tournament. The photo, from August 2019, was taken by a teammate in the visiting locker room of the Shandong Sports Center in Jinan, China, where everything is joy. TO Juan Pablo Cabaña His hands are not enough to take a selfie. The kid from Atalaya, Córdoba, has just experienced a new night of glory. With two goals in the final against Santos, from Brazil, he gave the Boca Sub 18 the title of two-time champion of the Weifang Cup, friendly youth competition in which several of the best teams on the planet participate, alternately. Juampi, as his friends call him, is 17 years old and wants, more than ever, to reach the First Division. Leaders, technicians, and scouts from different clubs around the world begin to follow in the footsteps of the MVP of the competition, the same one who in 2018 upset Valencia in the final of the Eevergrane U17 International Football Championship, which Boca would later win on penalties.
Champion in the Sixth and Fifth Division of AFA, Cabaña will continue climbing the categories until definitively consolidating himself in the Xeneize Reserve, where he will obtain the 2021 Projection Tournament and the 2022 Champions Trophy, along with players such as Exequiel Zeballos, Luca Langoni, Valentín Barco, Luis Vázquez , Ezequiel “Equi” Fernández, Vicente Taborda, Leandro Brey, Jabes Saralegui, Gabriel Aranda and Rodrigo Montes. Same litter as Alan Varela, Nicolás Valentini, Agustín Sandez and Santiago Ramos Mingo, His dream would be cut short starting in 2023. He had a professional contract with the club and a termination clause of $10,000,000. But everything changed suddenly. Relegated by Hugo Ibarra, and victim of a series of injuries, he did not agree to renew his contract and the leadership decided to “hang” him for six months.
This Saturday, Cabaña will officially debut in his new club: Central Norte de Salta, Boca’s rival for the Argentine Cup. In a conversation with LA NACION, the 22-year-old striker tells of the mistreatment he suffered from the Football Council and confesses that he has not yet decided whether or not he would shout a goal against Xeneize. “I owe everything to Boca, although there will be people in the box who I would like to make a little bit bitter…”.
The story of Juampi Cabaña is very similar to that of Julián Álvarez, the former River attacker who is a figure at Manchester City. La Araña was born in Calchín, a small town in Córdoba in the department of Río Segundo. At the age of 10, he was discovered in his baby-soccer club by Piero Foglia, a key person in your professional development. In addition to being a scout and talent recruiter, Foglia is the sports director of the Atalaya club, an institution that specializes in recruiting and promoting youth players. Among other players, Javier Pastore, Cristian Pavón and Julio Buffarini, as well as Álvarez and Juan Pablo Cabaña, paraded for the Barrio Argüello entity.
The former Boca is a native of San Vicente, a town of 20,000 inhabitants located east of the provincial capital. He started in Unión San Vicente and then went to Atalaya, the step prior to his arrival in Buenos Aires. In 2015 he carried out two tests in Boca, one at the beginning and another at the end of the year. He passed all the filters and signed for the Eighth Division.
Unlike other players who were free on December 31 (several of them, champions of America and the Under 20 world), Cabaña signed a professional contract in July 2021 and became part of the senior team under the technical leadership of Sebastián Battaglia. “With Seba I played a lot in Reserve and he also made my debut as a professional. During the time of (Miguel) Russo I also went up a lot to train with Primera, although Battaglia was the one who took me into account the most,” he highlights. His debut, in fact, occurred in the last part of Russo’s cycle, but with the former Boca and Villarreal player on the bench. It was on July 27, 2021, during the mandatory isolation of the professional teamwho had just starred in a pitched battle in the mixed zone of the Mineirao stadium, after losing to Atlético Mineiro for the Copa Libertadores. Cabaña went to the bench in the 2-0 defeat against San Lorenzo and entered at 23 ‘of the second half to replace Edwin Cardonain an empty Bombonera but with all of San Vicente cheering from a distance.
“My 2021 in Reserva was very good. I scored many goals and we became champions. But in 2022 I suffered a series of tears and gave up a lot of ground. With Hugo’s assumption I stopped having minutes and I went from starting with Battaglia to being third 9 with Ibarra”, laments Juampi, from Salta, after his second training shift.
-Ibarra didn’t love you?
-I don’t know if he didn’t love me, but he didn’t like me. I went very well with Seba Battaglia. He shared the front with Luisito Vázquez, I on the outside and he on the inside, with Vicente Taborda as the hook. And if we played with three forwards, Luis played as 9 with Langoni, Zeballos or I in the winger position. But Hugo arrived and leaned towards other names. The first semester I had to go to the bench (the starter was Érik Bodencer, today in Atlanta) and in the second part of the year I started with injuries. In the interim, Toro (Gonzalo) Morales appeared and did not come out again.
-Even so, they were champions.
-Yeah. The thing is that we continued playing the same way as with Battaglia. We made Hugo champion with the Battaglia training, because we were already an armed group. That team played alone: (Sebastián) Lastra; (Eros) Mancuso, (Renzo) Giampaoli, Valentini, Barco; Montes, Equi Fernández, (Gabriel) Vega; Taborda; Vázquez and me; or Langoni, Vázquez and Zeballos. Great equipment.
-And with Battaglia in First Division you were not given…
-Seba brought me up, but it was the time when Luis (Vázquez) was scoring goals from all sides and then (Darío) Benedetto came, who became the starter. There is a lot of competition in Boca.
After Battaglia’s departure, with no chance in Reserve or age to play in Fourth Division, Cabaña began to analyze proposals from other clubs. “I had a call from Platense, but the guys from the Council didn’t let me go. And in the middle of 2023 they came looking for me from Quilmes, which was a good opportunity, but again they put obstacles in their way. They wanted him to sign the renewal and include a lot of clauses in the contract, with a priceless purchase option. And the possibility, obviously, fell. The reality in Boca is what they say, I am not going to discover anything new…”, he suggests.
-What is that reality?
-That there are people who believe they own the club. In June 2023 they offered me a renewal, because in December I was left without a contract. But the money they offered me was very little, it was very far from the numbers that my representative and I were managing, and it was not a fortune. There were handlings that I didn’t like and I ended up leaving free, after six months without kicking a ball. They (the Council members) throw their shirts on you and I can’t cut the shirts off to eat.
-Did it happen to you alone?
-No, many went through the same thing. Rodrigo Montes, for example, was wanted by Newell’s and Central Córdoba (in Santiago del Estero). He asked to go to Newell’s and (Raúl) Cascini responded: “Come on, let us fix it.” But he never knew anything again. Cascini appeared the same day he closed the pass book and told him: “Either you go to Central Córdoba or you stay here Reserva.” Rodri went to Santiago, played, and upon returning from the loan he called it Newell’s again. They didn’t let him go and he was left standing for six months, running around a field. Another well-known case is that of Nahuel Molina, who also left free and ended up breaking into the national team. When I talk to Moli, he tells me: “Thank goodness I left…”.
-How was the deal with the Council?
-According, ha. When I scored goals, they called me every day to ask me how she was, if she had had dinner, if she needed anything. For the last six months they didn’t even answer my phone. I would pass them on the property, you would pass them by and they wouldn’t even look at me, they would avoid me. I have enormous affection for Boca, a tremendous sense of belonging because he gave me absolutely everything. What’s more, to this day I still speak with the caretakers of the pension and with many former teammates of the club, and I have an excellent relationship with all of them. But in these last six months there were people whose ego and pride got the better of them.
Cabaña arrived in Salta in January of this year, and since then he has been starting in most of the friendly matches. He did not officially debut because Federal A starts this weekend and the AFA gave Central Norte a free date so he can prepare for the match with Boca.
“I’m not one to get nervous about these kinds of games. In any case, I have already been observing some movements of Boca’s central defenders to see how I can take advantage,” he admits. And he admits that he still doesn’t know how he would react if he scored a goal: “I talk to my old man and he tells me: ‘scream it’, because he knows how bad I’ve had it these past few months.. I have great respect for the institution, it is the club that formed me, and I also shared many years with guys that I am going to face. We will have to see how the match goes, how the result is. If I score a goal in the last minute, how can I not shout about it?