Junior closes its 2026 second semester on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. against Deportivo Pasto at the stadium Libertad in the capital of Nariño, and the trip arrives with the club already eliminated. The match is the final stop in a campaign that went from disappointment to a last-day formality, even if the result will still shape how the season is remembered.
The reason people are searching for pasto junior now is simple: this is the game that ends the run, and it comes with several absences. Teófilo Gutiérrez is not on the traveling squad, Sebastián Viera will serve his third suspension date after his expulsion against Boyacá Chicó, and Jesús Rivas will miss the match because he was injured in the 2-0 win over Cúcuta Deportivo. Junior got that victory on Monday in Gutiérrez’s farewell match, and it lifted the team to 14th place with 19 points, but it came too late to change the bigger picture.
That picture was sealed before Thursday. Junior was eliminated after drawing 1-1 with Boyacá Chicó in Tunja, leaving this visit to Pasto as little more than the final chapter of a second semester the club itself is treating as disastrous after the glow of a historic bicampeonato. Deportivo Pasto brings its own concerns into the match after a 5-0 loss to Santa Fe, a defeat that came while its professional squad had stopped activity over unpaid overdue salaries and an under-20 group had been used instead.
There is also a bigger question hanging over the game than the standings. Sebastián Viera has a contract with Junior until December next year, but his continuity for 2027 is not guaranteed, and the club’s finish in Pasto will not answer that alone. What it will do is close a semester that began with ambition, ended in elimination, and leaves the next decision sitting squarely on the bench.
