Instituto de Córdoba and Argentinos Juniors head the two Torneo Clausura zones after nine rounds, while Racing Club, one of Argentine football's most decorated clubs, sits last in its group without a league win in exactly two months.
Instituto retook the lead in Zone A with a 2-1 win over Estudiantes de Río Cuarto, finishing the round level on 19 points with Vélez Sarsfield and Defensa y Justicia. Vélez remains the only unbeaten team left in the tournament. Boca Juniors sits further back on 14 points but still inside the zone's playoff positions, which take the top eight of each 15-team group into the knockout stage.
In Zone B, Argentinos Juniors leads on 18 points, ahead of Gimnasia de La Plata and Sarmiento de Junín on 16. River Plate, on a three-game winning streak that included last week's comeback win over Atlético Tucumán, sits mid-table on 13 points but within playoff range.
Racing is the round's biggest story for the wrong reasons. The club lost 2-1 at Huracán on September 13, its third straight defeat, and has not won a league match since mid-July aside from a Copa Argentina victory over Belgrano. That leaves Racing last in Zone B on 5 points from nine games. Coach Juan Pablo Vojvoda, under mounting pressure to keep his job, said after the loss: "I am not abandoning my players during difficult moments. I don't feel represented by those values," pledging to stay on despite the results.
The Clausura standings run separately from the Tabla Anual, the cumulative table combining this tournament with the earlier Torneo Apertura that determines most of Argentina's berths in the 2027 Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana. Independiente Rivadavia, Argentinos Juniors and Vélez currently hold the annual table's top three spots, which lead to the Libertadores, while Boca, River, Estudiantes, Gimnasia, Rosario Central and Independiente occupy the Sudamericana range further down that same table.
Both zones return to action this weekend for Fecha 10, with Racing again needing a result to avoid slipping further from the group it currently anchors from the bottom.