Julio Meléndez and the Boca-River classics: This was written about him while he shines in the Xeneize box

It is the weekend of the River Plate vs. Boca Juniors superclassic and South American football turns its head towards Argentina, and the memories of the oldest Bostero fans have a red-and-white part. This Sunday Boca will go to the Monumental with two Peruvians in its starting lineup. Luis Advíncula, already solid on the right wing, and Carlos Zambrano in defense due to Carlos Izquierdoz’s injury.

Boca is painted red and white for this date of classics and from Argentina the memories of the Peruvians in the ‘Xeneize’ painting are immediately recounted, especially Julio Meléndez, who spoke with El Comercio precisely about the Zambrano and Advíncula and the Peruvian team .

In one of his anecdotes, Meléndez recalled that his only expulsion occurred in a classic and when he left the playing field he was applauded by both Boca Juniors and River Plate fans. It is that he was a defender that everyone enjoyed. His elegance for the brand was far from what was required in Argentina.

Curiously, Meléndez traveled to Argentina without even knowing that he could play there. “It was because of Héctor Chumpitaz. In a rest of America that they took me in which Pedro Perico León and Víctor ‘Kilo’ Lobatón were also going. Chumpitaz was playing the Copa Libertadores and I was behind him fighting. Lito Salinas tells me that he was going to travel to Chile to replace Héctor, “he told El Comercio.

Permission to remove a ball

And everyone surrendered to “the Peruvian and his ballet.” The Graphic recalled a few years ago a text by the writer Osvaldi Ardizzone, very knowledgeable about the history of soccer in Argentina. He knew of Carlos Gómez Sánchez, Víctor Benítez and Miguel Loayza, but he dedicated an entire work of art to Julio Meléndez in 1970, when the defender had already been in the painting ‘Xeneize’ for two years.

Excerpt from the text by Osvaldo Adrizzone

“Excuse me…! But I have to take the ball away from him…” he titled the article El Gráfico. In it, Adrizzone says in words what Meléndez did with his feet: pure art. “But what stands out the most above all these great attributes is hygiene to solve the most compromised circumstances. The feeling of neatness that emerges from each maneuver. , he says about Julio Meléndez. Ardizzone says that the same Peruvian said that before going out on the field he prayed for no injuries and that the time he hurt an attacker he couldn’t sleep “because of conscience.”

The writer highlights that Julio broke the molds of those great defenders standing like security towers in front of the goalkeeper. “Who is not encouraged by the dark-haired Meléndez? Everyone encourages him, even the most timid advances with the intention of surpassing him, knowing that he cannot physically lose. P ”, he graphs about the Peruvian game in the note that reminds El Grafico.

The Peruvian and his ballet

“If I’m not mistaken it was in the second or third game. The Boca Juniors fans sang that song in all the games I was playing. In the Boca area there is a Peruvian waltz, they said. That meant a lot to me”, Julio Meléndez told El Comercio about that song. “It’s the Peruvian and his ballet…”, he was his precise cut, his clean start, his intelligent pass.

The Argentine journalist Bernardino Veiga also recalled one of those many scenes that ‘Pocho’ Rospigliosi himself was able to witness on the Chacarita pitch. “”, reads an old newspaper clipping, in which it is narrated that weeks later the chant was repeated on the River Plate field, where the ‘millionaire’ fans waited for the Peruvian to leave the stadium to applaud him.

no world

It was that idol status that he had achieved in Argentina that did not allow him to play the World Cup in Mexico 70 because he did not attend the game that defined Peru’s pass against Argentina in the Bombonera. “He was succeeding at Boca Juniors. If he played that match and made a mistake, as Alfredo di Stéfano told me, they would have said that I sold out, that I wanted Argentina to win. For that reason, I was not there and it was very good, ”he confessed to the journalist Julio Vizcarra of El Comercio.

“That match left him out of the World Cup”; they asked the defender. “Yes, but I played in the Qualifiers, which are more difficult. And in the 1977 Qualifiers for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, I qualified Peru”, he answered.

That is Julio Meléndez, a Boca Juniors veteran with stripes in the Peruvian national team. He was not in any World Cup, but his talent for the brand made him recognized throughout the world of football.

“The day I die, I want to be buried with the Boca shirt. It is a club that gave me great satisfaction”, Meléndez once told La Nación. His history was written there with the two-time championship in 1969 and 1970 and the Copa Argentina in 1969 after playing 154 games.