Boca Juniors will visit Newell’s Old Boys at 17:00 on the third date of the Clausura, with Andrés Merlos set to referee the match at the Coloso Marcelo Bielsa in Rosario. Adrián Franklin will be in the VAR room for a game that arrives with Boca still looking for its first local win.
That is why Newell's Vs Boca Juniors is drawing attention now. The fixture lands in the middle of a Sunday schedule that also includes River Plate against Rosario Central at 19:15, Deportivo Riestra against Barracas Central at 14:30, Aldosivi de Mar del Plata against Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata at 14:30, and Lanús against Instituto de Córdoba at 21:30. For Boca, the stakes are sharper than a routine league date because the team is trying to turn a difficult run into points that count in the domestic table.
Newell’s arrives with a clearer local shape. It has one victory and one defeat in its first two matches, a start that leaves it with something to defend at home and something to build on. Boca, by contrast, comes in after a demanding qualification in the Copa Sudamericana against O’Higgins of Chile, a result that may have brought relief but has not yet been matched by a league win. The contrast is what gives this game its edge: one side is trying to steady an uneven start, while the other is trying to prove that continental exertion can be followed by control at home.
Merlos and Franklin now sit at the center of the next step, because the confirmed details stop at the whistle and the kickoff. No lineup has been set out here, and that leaves the shape of the match open until 17:00 in Rosario. What is already fixed is the setting, the referee, the review official and the pressure on Boca to answer a simple question it has not solved yet: whether this visit can finally produce a local win.
