Liveblog: FC Barcelona @ Athletic Bilbao
By: Cameron |
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Come join us as we take on Athletic Bilbao! The stream will start up approx 20 min before the match, so come on in and enjoy this time with us!
Category: Team News
Barcelona @ Athletic Bilbao Preview: Cooking Lions With Chef Guardiola
By: Pedro | 3 Comments
Well, we’re stuck in it now, aren’t we? With the quickest of glances at the upcoming schedule, you’d reckon that Pep, Tito and Co. will have to sharpen their knives and put on their cowboy boots for what’s about to happen.
You see, they don’t just hand out stadium nicknames like bits of corn candy on Halloween – well, unless you’re Guti, whose nicknames aren’t suitable for this PG-13 rated blog anyway. Particularly when the nickname happens to be ‘The Cathedral’. And that’s exactly the nickname for that bit of grass that Athletic Bilbao play on.
It’s a venerable pressure cooker, just not the kind you’d see Gordon Ramsey or Wolfgang Puck using. Add in 22 players, a bit of football, and several thousand sprinkles of fans and you’ve got yourself a tidy way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday night.
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Technically a more fitting sporting venue for Saturday’s match.
But over the past several years, Barcelona has acclimatized to the Basque pressure cooker… Read the rest of this entry »
Barça players and the International Break: this time we swear in French
By: Ade C. | 19 Comments
So this is it, boys and girls, the end of international break. Let’s hear that sigh of relief and the raucous celebrations because (with the exception of Touré and Keita leaving for the African Cup), our boys are home to stay until the next year at least.
And what did this day of friendlies and World Cup playoffs leave us? Well, an image I wouldn’t have believed possible, for a start.
“Yes, it was a handball,” said Thierry Henry of this. No kidding, Tití. No. Kidding.
Thierry Henry (and Eric Abidal, who is nursing his thigh injury in Barcelona) got their golden World Cup Ticket thanks to a highly-questionable move by our French striker, who handled the ball (twice, if you at the video closely) to set a goal that Arsenal’s William Gallas slipped past the Irish goalkeeper. My theory is that he had his eyes closed and that the ultra-tight new French kits had cut off blood flow and feeling in his upper limbs, so he really didn’t realise that he was playing volleyball for a moment. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Read the rest of this entry »
A quick query on the renewal of a certain Mexican’s contract.
By: Joan | 9 Comments
An old Mexican man, worn from years of work and the testing weight of life, once told me as I stood in (for the night) the oddly contemplative McDonalds, waiting for possibly the most time-consuming six pack of McNuggets I’d ever ordered: “The broken man comes back strong and desperate, the gently caressed comes back when he feel it’s safe to do so”
Now what could that possibly have in it that’s relevant to Rafael Marquez? Read the rest of this entry »
Category: BarcelonaBarça players and the International Break: Spain, Argentina and the meaning of ‘friendly’
By: Ade C. | 20 Comments
So, yesterday was the first day of friendlies, World Cup qualifiers and playoffs of this maligned international break, and those of our boys who had been called up by their respective NTs were in the thick of things, as usual (except for Chygrynskiy, who didn’t play in the match that Ukraine played to a goalless draw against Greece).
Yaya Touré, the man who Inter, ManCity and Arsenal all seem to want (or so the rumours say), played the whole match in Cote D’Ivoire’s somewhat meaningless 3-0 victory against Guinea, seeing that they are already qualified for the World Cup.
Henry and Abidal were also on their starting XI as France scraped a 0-1 victory over Ireland, to start with the right foot their playoffs to make it into the World Cup. (ETA: I’ve just read Eric Abidal has left the French team claiming injury and won’t play on Wednesday… fingers crossed that it’s not serious!)
Alves came in the 63rd minute in Brazil’s friendly 1-0 victory against England; kudos to Dunga, who tried to play Dani and Maicon at the same time, and to our Man of Steel, who even had time to try one of his infamous shots from afar which, unsurprisingly, didn’t render him a goal.
And now for the real deal: the Spain-Argentina friendly, which gathered six, yes, *six* barcelonistas on the pitch.
I wouldn’t exactly call this “friendly”...
Read the rest of this entry »
FC Barcelona 5, Cultural Leonesa 0, a.k.a. “We feel pretty!”
By: Ade C. | 17 Comments
Forgive any typos you might find in this post, as I find that typing whilst bouncing gleefully on your seat and humming “Tot el camp” is not conductive to good spelling.
Yesterday’s was one of those pretty, gleeful matches that culés (and football aficionados everywhere) can only sit back and enjoy while they happen, and then go to hunt for the highlights and watch again and again. And it wasn’t because Cultural Leonesa wasn’t trying, far from it.
The match started in a sombre note, as the boys jumped on the pitch wearing black bracelets to keep a minute of silence for the death of Robert Enke, who played for us in the 02/03 season and who will be sorely missed.
Rest in peace, Robert Enke.
Pep, making use of his usually unfathomable methods, rolled out a team that seemed far stronger than the situation warranted, with a back four that wouldn’t be out of place in a tough Liga fixture: Pinto, Alves, Puyol, Márquez, Maxwell, Busquets, Iniesta, Dos Santos, Pedrito, Bojan and Jeffren. Read the rest of this entry »
FC Barcelona vs Cultural Leonesa: how to play in the midst of a stampede. An international stampede.
By: Ade C. | 13 Comments
Yes, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. FC Barcelona players have way too much class to trample anyone in their rush to leave for international pastures. I assume they will politely excuse themselves before leaving, but the point remains that someone is going to actually have to go on the pitch to defend the 0-2 result we got in the first leg of our Copa del Rey fixture against Cultural Leonesa.
And that someone will be Pedrito, probably, because he wants to show us that he can score in every single match Pep lets him play. And Pinto and his Magical Braided Ponytail (TM), because otherwise he might as well turn fulltime musician. And… and…
International break is a nightmare, people.
Henry and Abidal have already left for Ireland, to make a stand with the French NT in the playoffs, Chygrynskiy has flown home to do the same with Ukraine against Greece, and Touré has left to play with Cote D’Ivoire, even though they’ve already have their World Cup Golden Ticket.
There’s something missing from this picture. Something like... well, players.
Review: Barcelona’s lethargy, Mallorca’s misfortune, and how Ibrahimovic is “Il Magnifico”
By: Joan | 15 Comments
A solitary flag, claret and blue, stands where two lines meet. When it comes to Barcelona, a few keywords are in constant rotation: possession, eminence, Lionel Messi, brilliant, short (and yet the likes of Piqué, Chygrynskiy, Touré, Busquets, and Ibrahimovic tower over most), tiki-taka, Real Madrid, set-pieces (I can’t include any sort of formatting that would denote anxiety), and probably pornography. It is sometimes obscene to the stragglers how well Barcelona can play football.
And, at other times, it’s sometimes just as obscene how poorly they can play, considering. Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Team NewsLa Liga Preview: FC Barcelona vs Real Mallorca
By: Ade C. | 18 Comments
Even thought everyone seems to have forgotten in the face of the catastrophe that is our coming to a draw in our last two matches, we have an important match to play on Saturday. We need to re-establish our superiority over the whole wide world after having stumbled over Osasuna and Rubin Kazan. RM is one measly point behind, so we can’t afford anything less than a victory. The fans are getting surly and some of us wake up screaming in the night after having flashbacks to the 07/08 season. Leo Messi seems to have lost his magic, Xavi is showing signs of exhaustion after dragging the whole team forwards match after match, and the spare pieces that ought to hold up our defence when Puyol, Piqué or Alves aren’t available aren’t quite fitting together as well as they should.
We need another Zaragoza victory. We need to watch our team play and marvel at the pretty (and I don’t just mean Piqué), instead of seething over missed chances, wasted passes, and crosses that a few someones ought to be nailed to. We need to gather our wits, regroup, set a new plan and shake off the memory of the recent unfavourable results.
And Real Mallorca are coming for a visit. Tsk, tsk…
Sorry, guys! Nothing personal...
Read the rest of this entry »
Barcelona 0, Rubin Kazan 0 – I can’t believe it’s not butter (better)!
By: Cameron | 16 Comments
And so I command, and so it shall be done.
Or at least, that’s what Pep wanted to have happen tonight. It didn’t quite turn out that way. Barcelona, traveling to the frigid unknowns of Municipal Institution Football Club Rubin Kazan and their home in Kazan. It was supposed to be a day of redemption, you know, from that game. We were going to plug away and break the deadlock on the frozen pitch, and we were going to applaud Pep for getting things right this time.
But then…..
? The look. You and me both buddy.
Category: Team News
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