Maradona’s last match: River Plate 1-2 Boca Juniors, an ending at half-time (1997)

The Football Documentary Channel · Published 25 October 2026

Maradona’s last match: River Plate 1-2 Boca Juniors, an ending at half-time (1997)

Diego Maradona’s last match was a superclasico, River Plate 1-2 Boca Juniors at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires on Saturday 25 October 1997, round ten of the Torneo Apertura in the Argentine Primera Division. Maradona captained Boca, played only the first half and was gone by the interval. Boca came from a goal down to win, and four days later he announced his retirement. That afternoon closed one of the largest careers the game has seen.

He was 36, and he walked off at half-time with Boca a goal down. The goals that decided the match came after he had gone.

A Superclasico That Doubled as a Goodbye

River Plate 1-2 Boca Juniors at the Monumental

A superclasico rarely fell on a Saturday, and 60,000 filled the Monumental for this one. River were at home and chasing the end of a drought: more than seven years without beating Boca, back to the Apertura of 1990. Ramón Díaz managed River, Héctor Veira had Boca, and out in front of the visitors, armband on, walked Diego Maradona. Behind him Boca lined up Córdoba in goal, then Solano, Cagna, Bermúdez, Toresani, Vivas, Arruabarrena, Fabbri, a bleached-blond Martín Palermo and Latorre. River, led out by their captain Hernán Díaz, answered with Burgos in goal behind Ayala, Placente, Berizzo, Astrada, Monserrat, Gallardo, Salas, Berti and Rambert.

The superclasico is the fixture our Football Rivalries films keep returning to, and this was the derby at its most charged: the most famous footballer alive, 36 years old and carrying a body that had stopped cooperating, playing out his career on his oldest rivals’ pitch. The referee was Horacio Elizondo, a name that would mean little outside Argentina for another nine years, until he took charge of the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin and sent off Zinedine Zidane for the headbutt on Marco Materazzi.

How Maradona’s Last Match Unfolded

Maradona touched the ball ten seconds after kickoff and then, for one half, was a captain more than a playmaker. River took the lead on 40 minutes: Salas laid it back to Berti on the edge of the box and the midfielder nicknamed la Bruja bent a left-foot shot across Córdoba for 1-0. That was the score when Maradona walked off at the interval, and it was the last football he would play. The two goals that decided his final match arrived after he had gone.

Boca levelled almost immediately. Two minutes into the second half Latorre threaded a pass and Toresani finished past Burgos de tres dedos, with three toes, for 1-1. Around 20 minutes later, on the 22nd minute of the half, Palermo climbed above two River defenders and headed the winner, a goal River protested furiously because Bermúdez had screened Burgos in the build-up. Elizondo gave nothing, and Boca led 2-1. Palermo’s header was the first chapter of what he would become at the club, and it won the match while Maradona sat on the bench.

The Substitution, and the Retirement Four Days Later

Caniggia for Maradona, Riquelme for Vivas

The image that survives is a changing of the guard: Maradona off, a teenage Juan Román Riquelme on, the Boca number 10 handed down in a single substitution. The team sheet does not quite say that. Veira put Claudio Caniggia on in Maradona’s place, and Riquelme, a 19-year-old wearing number 20, came on at the same moment for Nelson Vivas. Later chroniclers turned the coincidence into Román por Diego, the symbolic passing of the shirt, but two players came on together, and the one replacing Maradona was not the one everybody remembers.

Maradona did not reappear for the second half. Veira had decided he would not come out, and Maradona’s own account was that his left adductor had gone again around the 35th minute. Either way, the greatest player of his generation ended his career substituted at half-time with his side losing, and watched the win from the touchline.

The Retirement, and What Counts as Maradona’s Last Match

The ending was not graceful. By full time the solemnity Maradona had shown River before kickoff was gone, and he was back out on the pitch after dark, celebrating bare-chested and taunting the home crowd with a line that has outlived the result, that River had lost their knickers. Four days later the mood had turned again. On Wednesday 29 October 1997, the day before his 37th birthday, Maradona announced in a radio interview that he would not play again.

One caveat is worth keeping straight. A testimonial in his honour would follow at La Bombonera years later, so this was not the last time Maradona pulled on a Boca shirt in front of a crowd. It was, though, his last official, competitive match. There is a quiet symmetry to the result: Boca beat the team that would pip them to the title. River finished the 1997 Torneo Apertura champions on 45 points, one ahead of Boca on 44, so Maradona’s farewell was a win over the eventual winners.

READ MORE: More footballers who played, and left, on their own terms, in our Football Mavericks collection →

Maradona’s Last Match (1997)

A captain substituted at the interval, two goals scored in his absence, a bare-chested taunt after dark and a retirement announced four days on: that is how one of football’s largest careers ended, in River Plate 1-2 Boca Juniors on 25 October 1997. For more careers that finished in unexpected places, keep going through our On This Day series.

Sources: La Nacion, Goal, ESPN, RSSSF, Wikipedia.