Boca Juniors returned to La Bombonera on Friday night and immediately got back to league pressure, facing Lanús in the seventh round of the Torneo Clausura after finishing the work that had kept them away from home. The match started at 21:30 in Argentina and was shown live on TNT Sports, with the stadium once again open for a game that mattered for more than the novelty of the setting.
The return came after more than a month away from La Bombonera, a stretch that was long enough to make the homecoming itself part of the story. Boca needed points, and so did Lanús, but the Xeneize arrived with only one win and three consecutive draws in the Liga Profesional, a run that left little room for another slip if they wanted to move up in Zona A and the annual table.
Rodolfo Arruabarrena answered that pressure with a starting XI built to make the night count: Álvaro Montero, Dylan Gorosito, Lautaro Di Lollo, Facundo Herrera, Lautaro Blanco, Santiago Ascacíbar, Camilo Rey Domenech, Milton Delgado, Alan Velasco, Leonel Flores and Miguel Merentiel. That lineup was the clearest sign that Boca treated the return to its home ground as a league checkpoint, not a ceremonial reopening.
Before the gates opened for Lanús, Olé showed exclusive images of the finished renovation, underlining how much work had gone into getting the stadium ready again. The field at La Bombonera had undergone a deep renovation, and the club’s first home game after that project was supposed to reset the mood around the team. It also came with a simple burden: the points still had to be earned on the pitch.
That is what makes the match more than a routine fixture. Boca was back where it wanted to be, in front of its own crowd after 35 days, but the table still demanded an answer. If the home return was meant to change the tone of the campaign, the result against Lanús would decide whether it did.
