Gamper Pre-Game: aka Ibra’s real, right?

By: Iggy | August 18th, 2009

It’s more than a friendly, but it’s not quite as much as the SuperCup, what is it? The Gamper Trophy has been a one-game trophy since 1997 and lets be honest, it’s a glorified friendly where we get to play against a team that most likely wouldn’t be able to set foot in Our Cathedral otherwise. This year we see Man. City a team that without it’s oil money would probably still be a blip on the Premier League radar, but not the Champions League one (I’ll be nice and say the might’ve made Europa on their own). But they DO have that oil money and they DID spend it and now they have *gasp* good players (Tevez, Adebayor, Kolo Toure) that could challenge our Beloved Barça.

But that’s enough about the other team we have our own squad (I hear it’s pretty good) and our own surprises, specifically: Ibracadabra and Messi are healthy! so we can expect them to get some playing time.

Not so good news: Iniesta and Marquez are still out and won’t be back until the start of La Liga (get well soon Ghostface). Abidal and Henry trained separately yesterday and most likely will not play.

Guardiola hasn’t released a squad list so I’m gonna go ahead and guess at the starting lineup anyway (because I can do that)
————-Valdez—————
Alves–ElCapitan–Piquenbauer–Maxwell
—EngineMan–BigYa–Busi 2.0
–Messi–Ibracadabra–Mr.Pedro

Honestly, can you really argue with that lineup given the injuries/viruses/whatever the hell else might keep them from the field? You say you can?…oh, I guess now we should have a reasoned debate about the merits and demerits of what the different options bring to the field then.

In goal: Valdez…if you want Pinto to start just wait for the Copa, and Jorquera was already forgotten last season anyway, I’m gonna guess this is a unanimous one.
Back Four: Alves, he’s been the starter all last season, I’m gonna guess this is pretty unanimous. Piquenbauer and ElCapitan at CBs I also can’t imagine anyone arguing with that, Fontas and Muniesa will get chances later (maybe later in this game if we get far enough ahead) so I’ll consider that one near unanimous too.
Maxwell, the new signing pushes forward well (at least he did at Ajax and Inter) and with Abidal not at 100% I don’t think we should risk him. This should be a good chance to see an even more offensive strategy than last season with two widebacks that push up constantly. Which also means we’ll have to be even more careful of counterattacks and giveaways.
Middle Three: BigYa as defensive midfielder has been weighed, measured, and been found gi-frigging-normous, honestly I can’t think of any player I would rather have in that position. Tall enough to win aerial battles, strong enough to go shoulder to shoulder with other mids and forwards, skilled enough to get the ball to where it needs to go, and smart enough to know where it has to go.
EngineMan: He’s the second captain for a reason he’s good. I could go on and on, but I’m pretty sure we all agree that he should start.
Busi 2.0, I know a lot of people expect Keita again, and it wouldn’t be strange to see him (Keita’s good), but I like seeing Busi 2.0 out there more. Keita seems to fade out of play sometimes and definitely doesn’t have that ability to draw fouls like Busi 2.0. Also, he was raised from the youth teams, I can’t help but feel that he has the colors in his blood and he’s going to have to replace BigYa at defensive mid during the ACN, might as well give him all the practice we can.
Front Three: Messi, really, you’d rather see someone else there? no? so we agree, Messi stays.
Ibracadabra, you’ve seen him practice wearing the colors, now lets see him play wearing the colors…this oughta be good.
Mr. Pedro, two seasons ago he was Pedrito (Little Pedro) and now it’s Mr. Pedro for the rest of us. That said the starting spot there could be him or Wonderboy. I think Pedro should take it because he’s more of an out and out winger than Wonderboy who will probably end up crowding Ibracadabra and neither one of the two would play to their full potential, they need to practice together more. Henry won’t get the spot because he’s still kinda hurt so we’ll be safe.

So that’s the lineup (according to me).

If you want to watch the game, which I will assume that you do because you read this far already, and you live in the US then you better get your laptops/desktops out because it won’t be televised. I recommend rojadirecta.com and justin.tv to find live streams if you find any other good sites go ahead and post them in the comments section and we will all be very happy to see it.

I’m aware this post lacks pictures, I’m working on it, I promise.

Hasta la Victoria! Barça!!!