Among the more than two dozen footballers who returned from their respective loans to other teams and are training differently in the Boca Predio attention was drawn to the case of Bruno Valdez who, a priori, had terminated his contract with the Ribera entity on December 31. The defender, who was on loan in Cerro Porteño From the beginning of 2024, he will not be taken into account by Claudio Úbeda, but he is going through a particular contractual situation.
The specific thing is that Valdez suffered a ligament injury after confirming his loan at Cerro and his loan was automatically extended to the Barrio Obrero Cyclone and also their link in the Xeneize, since This is how this legal protection for footballers is regulated. This is why the 33-year-old central defender appeared in Boca and made himself available to the authorities on duty, although the board chaired by Juan Román Riquelme has made the decision to dispense with their services. From Brandsen 805 they aired Infobae that Valdez will continue in Cerro, something that coincided with the version that came out of the Guaraní entity at the end of 2025 when consulted by this medium.
It remains to be seen how the contract between Boca and Valdez will be broken, although the truth is that the door will be open to leave permanently and will do so in the coming days. This way, he Xeneize will release one of the foreign places that it currently has in the squad (the others are the Chileans Carlos Palacios and Williams Alarcón, who will have Argentine citizenship shortly, the Spanish Ander Herrera, the Uruguayans Edinson Cavani and Marcelo Saracchi – despite the fact that he is on loan in Scotland – and, in the next few hours, the Colombian Marino Hinestroza will join). It is worth remembering that the AFA allows a maximum of six non-EU nationals on the squad and only five can sign a team sheet per game.
“It’s a fifty-fifty. I started playing a lot of games, then I had to sit on the bench,” said Valdez when analyzing his time with the team. xeneize. With 34 matches played, including six duels from that Libertadores 2023 and obtaining the Argentine Super Cup 2022 In front of the Board of Trustees, the Paraguayan embroidered a star on the shield blue and goldalthough he did not register goals.
Returning to the controversy unleashed by Valdez’s statements regarding the lost final in Rio de Janeiro, the defender’s confession —“In the heat, I looked at the bench, at the boys we were there cheering on, and it crossed my mind to tell the teacher (Jorge Almirón) to put me in the last ten minutes and he listened to me. He gave me the opportunity to play in the final.”— sparked debate. The entry of the Paraguayan at 113 minutes, replacing Nicolás Figal with the number 25 on his back, fueled versions about an alleged signal linked to the long-awaited Seventh Libertadores, a theory that was never confirmed by the protagonists (2+5=7).
Regarding that passage of the match, Valdez detailed: “I entered as a 9. In the last minutes, the teacher looked back. I had an immense desire to enter and we had no forwards. I asked the teacher if in the last ten minutes I could get nine to go look for the centers. I had a lot of confidence in myself and unfortunately I didn’t have any plays left.” The version was publicly denied by the coach. Jorge Almironwho explained at the time: “People who know me know that it’s not true, it doesn’t exist, it didn’t happen like that. I have nothing to explain. Bruno had to come in at an important moment and he had taken a penalty against Palmeiras (in the semifinals) and he converted it. Which shows that everyone was very focused and involved. When it was their turn to play, they delivered. They did the penalties. “I have nothing else to say.”
The memory of the defeat in the Maracana It still weighs on Valdez. When referring to the atmosphere in the locker room after that final, the defender said: “The locker room remained silent, there was a lot of sadness and we just looked at each other. But we also had nothing to reproach ourselves, we put our efforts, we played overtime and unfortunately we couldn’t get what we wanted.” Despite the unfavorable outcome, Valdez reaffirmed that the group remained committed until the end, reflecting the level of demand and the characteristic pressure in Boca Juniors.
