Liga Argentina Clausura 2026 (M)

When Argentina played its first championship, in 1891, Italy was still seven years away from its own and Germany twelve. Outside the British Isles only the Netherlands, in 1888, had got there first.

That tournament was amateur and stayed that way for forty years. On 18 May 1931, eighteen of the biggest clubs walked out of the amateur association and founded the Liga Argentina de Football to put on the books what they had been paying under the table. Two championships ran in parallel until 1934, when the two structures merged into the AFA that still governs the game.

What came out of it was a very concentrated honour roll. River Plate hold 38 league titles and Boca Juniors 35; some way behind sit Racing on 18, Independiente on 16 and San Lorenzo on 15. All five are from Buenos Aires. That habit, which for 133 years looked like a law of nature, is precisely what broke in May.

Belgrano reached the Apertura final from fifth place in their zone, on 26 points. River Plate had finished second in theirs on 29. It was played on 24 May at the Mario Alberto Kempes in Córdoba, on neutral ground, in front of 57,000 people.

River went ahead on 18 minutes through Facundo Colidio. Leonardo Morales levelled on 26. After the break Tomás Galván put River in front again, 2-1, and that was the score at the 85th minute.

Then Nicolás Fernández scored from the spot. And on 88 he scored again. 3-2, no extra time, no shoot-out: two goals in five minutes for Belgrano's first ever top-flight title, and the man-of-the-match award for Fernández.

It was not only the club's first. It was the first Argentine champion from outside Buenos Aires and Rosario, and the first with indirect AFA affiliation, the arrangement through which clubs from the provinces enter the national championship.

In June 2011, Belgrano and River met in the promoción, the play-off that decided who went down. Belgrano won 3-1 on aggregate and River were relegated for the first time in their history. Belgrano's coach that night was Ricardo Zielinski.

Fifteen years later, Zielinski was back in that dugout and beat River again, this time for a title. He has since renewed and stays in charge for all of 2026, so this Clausura is run by the same man who wrote the two pages Núñez would rather not reread.

And the draw has put them back together. Belgrano and River share Zone B, so May's final is replayed as a league fixture on 18 October, in Córdoba with River as visitors. Zone A took Boca Juniors, Independiente, San Lorenzo, Vélez Sarsfield and Belgrano's two neighbours, Talleres and Instituto.

The 30 clubs are split into two zones of 15 that do not share a table. Each side plays 16 matches: 14 against the rivals in their own zone and two inter-zone fixtures, one of them their derby. Nobody faces half the league, which is why no single standings table applies to everyone.

The top eight in each zone go through to the round of 16, and there the bracket crosses them: the winner of Zone A hosts the eighth of Zone B, second plays seventh, and so on across the eight ties. From the round of 16 it is one match only, with the final on neutral ground. The champion goes straight into the Copa Libertadores.

At the bottom two sets of books are kept at once and both can condemn. Down goes the last team on the averages table — points spread across several seasons' matches, which punishes a long bad run — and down goes the last on the annual table, which adds Apertura and Clausura together. That same annual table hands out the remaining continental places.