Defensa y Justicia vs Boca
Defensa y Justicia are going through a very inconsistent spell. In a tightly contested match, they ended up losing 1-0 away to Estudiantes on Monday. It was their second straight league defeat, leaving them on 12 points in the Torneo Clausura—still enough to remain inside the playoff spots, though far from contention for next year’s international competitions. On top of that, Defensa lost 2-1 to Platense in their most recent home game, after previously recording three wins and one draw at their stadium.
Boca Juniors suffered a major disappointment last Sunday when they squandered a two-goal lead and ended up drawing 2-2 at home against CA Central Córdoba. Although they remain unbeaten in six league matches (three wins and three draws), El Xeneize missed the chance to go top of Group A and stayed on 14 points. However, they are still holding one of the Copa Libertadores qualification spots through the aggregate table. In addition, Boca have collected seven of the last nine points available away from home. Carlos Palacios succumbed to a muscle problem and will miss out. Edinson Cavani remains sidelined with injury. Alan Velasco will start instead of Palacios in the only expected change.
Defensa has been quite irregular this season and their numbers show it: after 9 rounds they have 3 wins, 3 draws and 3 defeats. Boca has definitely improved, they were very unlucky not to win last week after taking a two goals advantage, but their improvement is mostly in attack where they became more reliable scoring in 6 consecutive games so I’ll take the OVER here as I expect both teams to score at least once.