With his scoring power, Miguel Borja earned the ticket to be with the Colombian National Team again

And each goal, surely, attracted the gaze of Nestor Lorenzowho resisted wearing it in the friendlies on the Fifa date in March, but now, when the games against the United States and Bolivia are coming up, before the America CupI no longer had a way to leave him out, at least not from the pre-list of 28 players, of which 26 will remain.
When Borja was asked in Argentina about his absence from the Colombian National Team, he usually evaded the issue or claimed that he worked for River, to give them goals and victories.

But the firmness of his words could not hide what his heart was screaming, that he wanted to return, that he wanted to be among those summoned again. Borja didn’t say it, but his look did reveal it. Why didn’t I come back? he would secretly ask himself many times. Why don’t you call me? he would ask inside of him. What else do I have to do?, he would complain in front of the mirror. But Borja hid it. He often appealed to prudence, which contrasted with his eloquent celebration of each goal. He just waited for the moment, but how could he deny that it was his desire. When his representative Juan Pablo Pachón was asked about this absence, he revealed the goalscorer’s feelings. “If they call him at some point, he goes swimming,” he said on Blu Radio.

And when the call was up, Borja uncovered himself and commented on what he has really felt in all this time in which he has not worn yellow again. “I came to River also thinking about the National Team, I am going to be here for two years and it is two years without going to the National Team, that has me with that discontent because I have been there close to returning and it has not been possible, I hope that for the Copa América, the teacher has Miguel Borja in his portfolio and believes that I can help him in that important competition, it is something that motivates me to train well, to take care of myself, to focus,” he said to the club’s official media.

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Borja, who is now 31 years old, has always earned merit, because he has always scored goals, except that at some point he was reintegrated into the National Team and that was a condemnation. But the numbers have always spoken for him. Nobody can forget that he was the top scorer in the Colombian League in the first half of 2016 with 19 goals in Cortuluá. Distinction that he repeated in 2020, with 14 scores in Junior. But there is more: Borja has in his history having been elected the King of America, that is, the footballer of the year in the survey of the Uruguayan newspaper El País, in 2016; He was the top scorer in the Copa Sudamericana that same year, with 6 goals, and the best scorer in the 2018 Copa Libertadores, with 9. What’s more, he has scored so many goals in the Conmebol tournaments that today he has the not inconsiderable figure of 27 so many in Libertadores, which leaves him two behind his compatriot Antony de Ávila to enter the top 10 of the tournament’s all-time top scorers. That is an obsession with which Borja started this season: to be the top Colombian scorer in the continent’s main club tournament. “When the Libertadores started, it came to mind in every game that I have to reach that record,” he confessed.

Borja is also the first Colombian player to score two or more goals with four different teams in this international tournament (Atlético Nacional, Palmeiras, Junior de Barranquilla and River Plate). That is, many goals in his account. He also has titles, so don’t think that he doesn’t win anything: he won the Superliga and the Copa Sudamericana with Santa Fe; the Colombia Cup and the Copa Libertadores with Nacional; the Brazilian Championship with Palmeiras; the Super League with Junior, and the League, the Champions Trophy and the Argentine Super Cup with River… And currently he aspires to win the Copa Libertadores with the millionaire team. However, his thorn has always been the National Team, with which he has not managed to establish himself as the scorer that he is.

Swimming or rowing or running, this is how he one day joined the Senior National Team in 2016. He has not had stability dressed in yellow, the wasted goals in the last World Cup qualifier in Qatar cost him dearly. However, after his name appeared on the list of 28, Michelangelo must have felt a catharsis, maybe he didn’t believe it, or maybe he was very sure.

It is easy to imagine him waving his legs and arms like a hummingbird, just as he celebrated his goals, when he saw himself on the list; What’s more, he immediately spoke out on the networks with a publication that seemed like a relief. He put up a video of two goals he scored against Argentina, one against Dibu Martínez, in that clash for the 2021 Copa América in Brazil, when the goalkeeper tried to intimidate him and Borja, calm and cold, scored. And another in the World Cup qualifiers. He accompanied the video with a phrase: “Glory to God… Let’s go.”

Borja tore down the wall that separated him from the National Team. He did it with the formula of forwards, scoring goa
ls. The goals brought him back and they will be the ones who decide if he should stay…