He eventually settled down, although he missed a part of their season due to first team duty;[1][2] he still finished his first year with 32 games and one goal, in Segunda División.
[25] In the 2015 edition of the tournament, also hosted by his country, he won a penalty after being fouled by Gabon's Lloyd Palun, and converted it to open a 2–0 win which put Equatorial Guinea into the quarter-finals.
[26] In the last-eight encounter, against Tunisia, he converted a late penalty to tie the game at 1–1 and eventually take it to extra time, where he scored a free kick to take his country to its first ever semi-final.
[27] Balboa missed the first penalty in the shootout of the third-place playoff lost to the DR Congo,[28] but with three goals was the tournament's joint top scorer alongside four other players.
His paternal great-grandfather, Abilio Balboa Arkins, of Cuban and Sierra Leone Creole descent,[29][30] was mayor of Santa Isabel (renamed Malabo) during the 1960s.
Balboa Arkins' sons were also footballers: Norberto (Javier's paternal grandfather), Armando – both were killed after participating in a failed coup d'état against Francisco Macías Nguema – and Abilio Jr.,[31] the most prominent of the three who played with his national team.