Seven from seven with the pair

The concern was quiet but persistent through the early weeks of the Argentine Premier Division campaign. Independiente had conceded eight goals in five league matches without both first-choice centre-backs on the pitch, winning only one of those games, and the champions' defence looked anything but settled.

Then Iván Figueroa and Uziel de León started together, and the numbers shifted like a plot twist.

Seven league games, seven wins. Twenty-one goals scored, four conceded. With the pair in the middle of the back line, Independiente average three goals a game and concede 0.6; without one of them, the averages drop to one scored and 1.8 conceded. The difference is stark enough to make a spreadsheet romantic blush.

Figueroa, 24, has been at the club since coming through the youth intake in 2055, and his 208 appearances for Independiente make him the senior partner. De León, ten years his junior, arrived from the same academy in 2062 and has just sixteen first-team games to his name. Together, they have yet to drop a point.

The numbers do not just show a defence that keeps things tight. They show a team that scores more when the pair play. Three goals a game with them, one without. That is not a coincidence of fixtures; it is a pattern that has held across twelve league matches this season.

Independiente's recent history suggested this kind of run was possible. The club won three Argentine Premier Division titles in a row from 2054 to 2056, and their Copa Libertadores four-peat in the 1970s remains a benchmark. But this season's start had been uneven until the partnership clicked.

The 1-0 defeat to Cerro Porteño in the Copa Libertadores in July, when the pair did not start together, now looks like an outlier. In the league, the sequence with Figueroa and de León together is one of dominance: seven wins from seven, with the goals flowing at one end and the opposition restricted at the other.

There is a delight in watching a partnership form in real time. Figueroa, with his 259 club games and five goals, brings the composure; de León, with no goals but a growing reputation, brings the energy. Between them, they have turned Independiente's season from a stumble into a stride.

The numbers do not care about reputations or ages. They care about results. And right now, the results say that when Figueroa and de León play together, Independiente win. Seven times out of seven.