Almeria - Barcelona: Preview; Sunday 2pm EST

By: Isaiah | March 14th, 2008

Updated version. I found out this morning that there is so much more news available that I just couldn’t fail to update my “janky” preview. This is almost a complete rewrite.

It’s away to Almeria this weekend and it won’t be a cakewalk. Yes, we beat them 2-0 at the Camp Nou, but we’re looking at a very different lineup at the moment. Our defense should be back to what it was then (Zambrotta, Puyol, Milito, Abidal), which is cause for reassurance, but here is the quick and dirty list of players who will not be making an appearance against Almeria:

Messi, Zambrotta, Marquez, Deco Toure, Giovani, Ronaldinho, Ezquerro, Jorquera

The players in italics made an appearance against Almeria the first time. Did I miss any injuries? Probably. Fortunately Oleguer is back! Yay! The sarcasm is eating through my heart like some sort of acid! Yay! This is fun!* Who gives a crap about Oleguer? He’s just another piece of the payroll, not the actual squad. I never want to see him back out on the field again — but with all these injuries added on top of Rijkaard’s absurd devotion to him, you never know. I very much dislike Edmislon, but we have no real choice but to start him because Toure and Deco are out. So what other option does that leave us?

Here is the full squad lineup: Valdés, Pinto, Oleguer, Puyol, Milito, Thuram, Sylvinho, Abidal, Xavi, Iniesta, Edmílson, Gudjohnsen, Víctor Sánchez, Eto’o, Henry, Bojan, Víctor Vázquez, Pedrito.

This is my guess for a starting lineup:

Valdes, Puyol, Thuram, Milito, Abidal, Edmilson, Xavi, Iniesta, Gudjohnsen, Eto’o, Henry.

This is a fairly inflexible lineup, but what else can we do? Bojan on the bench and who else? This lineup looks like a 4-4-2 diamond, with Iniesta playing the pivotal playmaker role in the middle where Deco would normally roam. Gudjohnsen needs to have a good game so that Edmilson is protected, but who knows how he’ll handle Almeria’s defense, which will probably push up to try and speed up the game knowing that we have no subs to replaced tired players; in fact, who knows where on the field Guddie will play. Guddie might be called upon to become the attacking forward in the diamond formation, leaving Iniesta to control the left side. That’s probably how I’d start, but Rijkaard seems to push Guddie to the right side a little more, almost as if we’d be playing a 4-1-3-2 with the the 3 being flat across the middle, with Edmilson holding the center behind them. And I’m glad we have 3 B team players to warm the bench for us. We might see Pedrito at the very end, but I’d be super, super surprised to see any of them out there before the 88th minute. It’s just not Rijkaard’s style and in this case I think it’s understandable. Let them warm up a bit with the big boys, ease them into the pressure cooker that is La Liga. This is where I do think that Frankie boy is very intelligent: he rarely pushes a player that isn’t ready to be pushed. Of course, you could argue that he just never pushes players…

I don’t see any other starting defensive lineup than Puyol out on the right doing his level best (and you know he’s going to give 100% — I hate the term “give a 110%” because that’s both cliche and not f-ing possible), Thuram and Milito in the middle, and Abidal out wide. Sylvinho may provide a slightly better attacking touch than Abidal (though I disagree, see previous posts) but that would leave us without a healthy and capable Abidal, which is just dumb. We need the defense right now more than we need the offense. We cannot fall into a hole and have to work our way out of it. If we win 1-0, fine. But if we allow ourselves to go down by a goal, we’re screwed because who is going to score 2 goals for us? Henry?

By the way, I feel for Henry, even as I slam him for playing like ass. He’s man enough to admit that he’s not settling into Barcelona as well as he’d like because he misses his daughter, a sentiment that is very touching, actually. It points out that a lot of times we in the sports fan world can be overly critical of a player’s inability to settle into a team, without actually considering what they’re going through. Everyone reacts differently to different situations (for instance, I am the type of guy that can actually concentrate harder on things like work, research, or art when I am faced with heartache or personal disaster; I know this about myself from experience, but I also know that others can become distracted when they lose someone, something, or find themselves in a stressful environment. So I can’t blame Titty for this — I just want his daughter to move to Barcelona, solve all of her daddy’s problems, and win me some championships! I bet she’s awesome at soccer…)

There’s very little to say about this match, really. It’s f-ing go time, boys, so let’s pony up and win the game. Stats, though, are fun: Almeria are in 8th place, 5 points out of European competition. They’re 1 point ahead of Getafe and Valencia, so you know they want these points very, very badly. Their home record is decent enough: 7W-3D-4L (12GF, 8GA) while Barcelona is now 4W-6D-3L (18GF, 15GA). I’m surprised by how few goals Almeria has allowed at home (tied for best in La Liga with Barca and Racing Santander), but also equally surprised by how few goals they’ve scored (2nd worst, behind only Murcia who has 11). That’s suggestive of a strong defensive unit that slows the game down, so we’ll be lucky to get out with a 1-0 victory. It could play into our hands, though, to have it a possession-based game rather than a speed-based game. We won’t get tired and with our lack of subs, that’s a really good thing.

I’ll be out of the office next week on a business trip to majestic East Walpole, Massachusetts, so have a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day full of fun carbombs and drunken four-leaf clovers and leprechauns. Kevin will be supplying your review of the Almeria match as well as the preview of the Valladolid match. It looks like I’ll be able to catch the Copa match live from my house as I settle in to watch 48 hours of March fucking Madness on Thursday (the game is Thursday at 3:45), but Kevin will again be doing the preview and review of that game. And of course on Saturday, well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we’re going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don’t know, I don’t know if we’ll have enough time.**

*Your only hint for this reference: “I am the queeeen of France!”

**Actually I’m going to be watching March Madness all day. Thursday noon - midnight, Friday noon - midnight, Saturday noon - midnight, Sunday noon - eight or ten. Depends on when the games finish. Last year the Sunday contests were until 8pm, a fact I think secretly saved me from permanently injuring my back from sitting on that soft couch for three straight days. And this year I’m doing four! I love college basketball!