International Break: Of Boys and Henk ten Cate

By: Isaiah | October 9th, 2007

If you didn’t now this, Barcelona is a big club. Huge, if you will. Until international break, when the team’s squad is reduced to five players. Even the 17 year olds get call ups these days. Quickly, a list of those players who have received call-ups, with their international schedule in parenthesis, with friendlies in italics.

Spain: Iniesta, xavi, Puyol (Denmark, Finland)
Portugal: Deco (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan)
France: Henry, Abidal, Thuram (Faroe Islands, Lithuania)
Iceland: Gudjohnsen (Latvia, Liechtenstein)
Argentina: Messi, Milito (Chile, Venezuela)
Brazil: Ronaldinho (Colombia, Ecuador)
Mexico: Gio Dos Santos (Nigeria, Guatemala)
Spain U-21: Bojan (Poland)

The South American 2010 World Cup qualifiers are starting (yay) and the Euro2008 qualifiers continue (boo), but let’s hope that Barca’s players get through these both uninjured and maintaining their personal form. The currently injured international players are Touré, Zambrotta, Márquez, Edmílson and Eto’o, meaning that the group that has remained behind to train with the B team is Sylvinho, Jorquer, Oleguer, Valdes, and Ezquerro. My soure for all of this was, naturally, Barca’s official site.

If you’d like to follow the progress of Barcelona’s players, please check our sister site, World Cup Blog and the various pages of the national teams located there. The always excellent Linda from the beautiful game has moved her Argentina-oriented commentary to the Argentina WCB, so check that out for updates on Messi and Gabi Milito. And, of course, the rest of The Offside community will be buzzing with info about the latest round of qualifiers and all that jazz.

There is other news that is slightly Barcelona-related, of course, and it deals with Henk ten Cate, Rijkaard’s former assistant at the Camp Nou and a member of the staff when Barcelona won the Champions League in 2006. He left after the season ended to join Ajax, but is already headed towards Chelsea, of all places. Ernst Bouwes of Soccernet has a pretty good piece on him that’s worth reading, especially if you’re unfamiliar with Dutch soccer politics, as I certainly am. Ten Cate was obviously well-loved by the Barcelona players, but he hasn’t shown the steel required to take Ajax back to the top of the Eriedivise, which is something I’ve been surprised about for the last few years. I also think of Ajax as such a good team, but they haven’t really done much the last couple of seasons, so I can understand why an itchy trigger finger crowd like the one at Ajax would get rid of him. Is he a good fit as a Chelsea assistant? Probably, especially if he can get along with the Blues players. I wish him all the luck in the world, just not his charges…

I’m sure I’ll post a couple more items over the next week or so, but not too much. Mainly a wrap-up of the each of the match days and how the Barca boys did. I’ll be doing some research into the B team as well, and hopefully I’ll find a good page that deals with the female team so that I can report on them too.