Barcelona back in training in light of a wave of injuries

The Spanish team Barcelona returned to training today after the comfort given by the coach Pep Guardiola to the players after win over Sporting Gijon in the league with the outcome of 3-1.

Barcelona is preparing to face Bayer Leverkusen in the role 16th of  Champions League next Wednesday at the Camp Nou, after winning in Germany with the outcome of 3-1, but he will wait for a team excited to win over Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga with the outcome of 2-0.

And the highlight of the training session was the lack of participation of Thiago Alcantara with the rest of the team in training, where he took a solo training as a result of failing to recover from injury.

Alcantara, who is suffering from an injury to his right leg, did not enter in the list of Sporting Gijon, where Guardiola preferred his comfort.

And missed also the training session all of the Chile's Alexis Sanchez and the French Eric Abidal, who injured with a herniated disc, with the continuation of the long absences of both David Villa and Dutch Ibrahim Afellay.

And participated in the training session today, some players from the second team and most notably Marc Monnisya and Christian Teo, which increased the confidence of coach Pep Guardiola during the last period.

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Guardiola : “We played a serious game”

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The Barça coach was positive about the way his team played in their preseason opener in Split. He liked the second half more than the first.

Pep Guardiola is pleased with what he saw in Split. His players performed well (0-0) away to Hajduk. “We have not had a long time to work together and we took youth players … so it was good, I’m happy. We played a serious game.” He added that the debut had served “to put some ideas forward and get some kilometres under our legs”.

Guardiola also admitted that “the second half was better than the first” and that he was “satisfied with the players that debuted”. 

Iniesta and Fontàs also spoke to the media :

Iniesta :

“Alexis is a great player, Strong and fast. I hope he feels good and comfortable”.

“We’re sad Bojan is leaving because he’s a good friend”. 

Fontàs :

“It was hard, we’ve only been training a week, but we played a good game”. 

“With the fans shouting it makes no difference if you are more concentrated”. 

“I am very happy with my first game as a first team player”. 

“I don’t feel responsibility, I feel excitement, work, sacrifice and the need to help the team as much as I can”.

fans-fcb.blogspot.com || From 4,000 to 18,000 participants in FCB Camps

fans-fcb.blogspot.com || Jaume Marcet

There has been a 400% increase in attendance of official Barça summer schools (FCB Camp) with respect to last year. More than 18,000 children are enjoying the summer camps organised by FC Barcelona.

The Barça model is expanding around the world, and the FCB Camps are the finest example of this growing interest in learning more about the Barça model through hands-on experience.


Objectives of the campuses


The official FC Barcelona campuses offer the opportunity to learn about football skills and tactics in accordance with the same methods that are used with the Barça youth teams.


Children registering for the FCB Camps take part in parallel training, leisure and recreation activities related with football and Barça.


The camps encourage coexistence between school age boys and girls from different origins, cultures and concerns, but who all share the same passion for football and Barça.


The coaches do not only work on football issues, but also ensure the children get proper hygiene and diet. One of the aims of these campuses is to transmit the same values that FC Barcelona represents.


Official campuses


In Catalonia, Barça organises what are called Campus Sport (INEF Barcelona,Reus, L’Atmella de Mar, Tona i Prades). Also in Mallorca.


In the rest of Spain, the campuses are located in Candás (Asturias), Quintanar de la Orden (La Mancha), Fornelos de Montes (Galicia) and La Nucia (Alicante).


Barça also has international campuses in different countries: Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, England (London), Luxemburg, Italy, Croatia, USA (Los Angeles and Miami), Japan, Korea and Ireland.


In the coming months, there will also be FCB Camps in Colombia, El Salvador, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and other cities of the USA.


All campuses that have this logo on their websites are official FC Barcelona campuses. These campuses are always redirected to an official address: www.fcbcamp.cat the name of the campus


The logo and official image of the campus is also a means of checking that the FCB Camp is official and valid. There is also an email address that you can use if you have any doubts or queries in relation to the official FC Barcelona campuses: fcbescola.internacional@fcbarcelona.cat


Strategic locations


The choice of venues of FC Barcelona official campuses is based on strategic criteria.


The director general of FCB Escola, Xevi Marcé, understands that “we’d like to get everywhere, but that’s impossible. Barça looks for strategic locations based on the relevance of the places, the synergies with sponsors and also to promote the brand”.


Marcé highlights what is so unique about Barça’s camps: “we don’t sell the brand, we control the sporting aspects and the values. From the moment the children arrive to the moment they leave, we are not only interested in what they learn technically, but also the way they behave, their habits, the way they deal with colleagues and monitors…


Marcé feels FCB Camps are “the extension of the values and football coaching used at La Masia, we export them to the rest of the world by meticulously controlling things from Barcelona, where FCB Escola has its headquarters”.


The youth coaching factory


Marcé and Jordi Rovira were the main men behind the creation of FCB Escola in 2003. The School grew out of the Barça Social Tournament, which produced such players as Gerard Piqué and Víctor Valdés.


In these eight years, 65 children have progressed from the FCB Escola to the club’s own youth system. 14 coaches have also been promoted during this period, including most recently Jordi Pérez, who after working at the FCB Escola is now the coach of Barça’s Benjamí D team.


Given all the above, Marcé is quite right to describe the FCB Escola as a ‘youth coaching factory’.

fans-fcb.blogspot.com || A year since Rosell won election

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This Monday marks a full year since Sandro Rosell won the Barça presidential elections. The club has enjoyed extraordinary success in this time, not just on the pitch, but also economically, socially and institutionally.

         

“I will be everybody’s president. I want the members to know that the commitment starts today. I am fully aware of the huge responsibility I am assuming after achieving their extraordinary results. I won’t let you down”. Twelve months have passed since Sandro Rosell spoke those words on June 13, 2010 after winning the FC Barcelona presidential elections with 61% of the votes. 

         Sporting and economic excellence  

Rosell’s board officially came into office on July 1 and adopted key measures in all areas. Three of the most important achievements of Rosell’s first year of his mandate have been sporting excellence, work to make the club economically sustainable and to promote the role of the members as the owners of the club. 

In this regard, he set up a new sporting organigram, gave Pep Guardiola and the coaching staff new contracts for another year and then watched them guide the first team to another Champions’ League title at Wembley with a tremendous performance to beat Manchester United in the final and a third League title in a row, as well as the Spanish Super Cup. Also, both the basketball and futsal teams are on good course to win their domestic titles in what could be one of the most successful seasons ever for the club in terms of silverware. 

Economically, the board forecast losses of some 21 million euros (compared to 83 million the previous season) although in a recent press conference, vice president Javier Faus announced that “in two or three years Barça will be the most financially sound club in the world”. The signing of a syndicate credit at the start of the year, the reduction of ordinary expenses and agreements like that with the Qatar Foundation, the biggest sponsorship deal in world football, have gone a long way to achieving that financial solvency. 

          Key aspects 

But other than sporting and financial achievements, the first year in office has seen hard work on institutional and social aspects, including the recovery and improvement of relations with social, political and cultural institutions, the promotion of social initiatives, a new regulation of membership, measures to make the season ticket supplication process more transparent and the establishment of the ‘penyes segle XXI’ project for supporters clubs. Barça has also been promoted as an even more international brand and the Foundation’s work has been reoriented to focus more on the country’s own needs. 

           Promising future 

With his first year in command now over, Sandro Rosell will now be guiding the club towards new challenges in all areas, with such targets as further improvements to the club’s youth system and the setting up of the new Masia youth residence at the Ciutat Esportiva.

fans-fcb.blogspot.com || 449 goals scored with Guardiola on the bench

David Puig

Barça have scored 449 goals since Josep Guardiola became manager. Since the 08/09 season, 29 different players have been on target. Leo Messi, with 138 goals, is the top scorer of the last three seasons.

Eto’o and Henry top former players

Of the players that played under Guardiola but have since moved on, Samuel Eto’o and Thierry Henry were the top scorers. The Cameroonian scored 36 goals in his only year with Guardiola. Henry got 30 goals, 26 in 2008/9 and four in 2009/10.

Messi tops the ranking

Barça have been a goalscoring machine since Guardiola has been in charge. Almost everybody has contributed to that amazing tally of 449 goals in 183 games, but nobody more so than Leo Messi, who has scored 138 goals, 53 last season, to mark a constant improvement since the 2008/09 season, when he got 38 goals, and then got 47 year after, six fewer than the season just ended. 

Pedro, Bojan and Villa share 110 goals 

One of Guardiola’s finest discoveries, Pedro Rodríguez, is the second highest Barcelona scorer since 2008 with 45 goals. He is followed by Bojan Krkic, who has the best goals per minutes played record of the last three years, having totalled 29 goals. 

Last season’s new signing, David Villa, has already moved up to fourth out of the current players and sixth overall under Guardiola, with 23 goals. 

Xavi tops midfield goals, and Alves leads the defence 

But it is not just the strikers that score in this team. Under Guardiola, midfielders and defenders have scored 109 goals, with Xavi leading the midfielders, with 22 goals, followed by Keita, with 18. 

The top scoring defender is Alves with 13, followed by Piqué, who has 11. 

Young guns 

Of the youngsters from Barça B that have appeared under Josep Guardiola, five have scored a total of 8 goals. Thiago is the most inspired with 4, while Nolito, Fontàs, Víctor Vàzquez and Bartra have shared the other four.

fans-fcb.blogspot.com || Four consecutive leagues on the horizon

Anna Segura

Obviously, one of the main objectives of the next season will be another league championship. That would be the fourth under Guardiola, and would match the achievement of the Dream Team, who became the first Barça team to win four leagues in a row.

On Thursday, defender Gerard Piqué spoke precisely about that when he said next season they would be aiming “to win the fourth league in a row”. But that won’t be an easy thing to do, for winning four consecutive leagues is something extremely rare in the major European tournaments. 

            Equalling the Dream Team

Pep Guardiola often said this season that he considered “the league to be the most important title. The Champions League is more glamorous, but the competition that shows who the best team of the year has been is the league”. And in that sense, FC Barcelona have certainly made their mark over the last three seasons, having won the league every year since their current manager took charge. One more would draw the side level with their predecessors coached by Johan Cruyff, who were crowned Spanish champions every year from 1990/91 to 1993/94). 

            Rare achievement

Other than the Dream Team, only one other team has managed to win that many consecutive championships, and that team is Real Madrid. In the 1960s they won as many as five leagues in a row between 1960/61 and 1964/65 and equalled that record in the 1980s when they won every title from 1985/86 to 1989/90). 

            No four-time winners in Premiership or Bundesliga

No team has ever managed to win the league four times in a row in England or Germany. Three is the record in the former, first by Huddersfield Town (1923/24 to 1925/26), then by Arsenal (1932/33 to 1934/35), Liverpool (1981/82 to 1984/85) and Manchester United have done it twice (1998/99 to 2000/01 and 2006/07 to 2008/09). 

In the Bundesliga, which was created in 1963, three is also the record, achieved three times by Bayern Munich (1971/72 to 1973/74; 1984/85 to 1986/87; 1998/99 to 2000/01), and once by Borussia Monchengladbach (1974/75 to 1976/77). 

                Inter in Italy

Inter Milan is the most recent team to have put together a massive run of domestic titles. In 2005/06 they won the first of five Serie A titles in a row, a streak that was finally interrupted by local rivals Milan this season. We have to go back to the 1930s to find the only other Italian team to win five in a row, Juventus (1930/31 to 1934/35), although between 1945/46 and 1948/49, Torino won four. 

In France, Olympique Lyon won a record six league titles between 2002/03 and 2007/08, beating the previous record set by Olympique Marseille, who had won four from 1988/89 to 1991/92.

fans-fcb.blogspot.com || Guardiola's Barça break barriers

Edgar Fornós

This season, in addition to continuing to fill the cabinet with more trophies, has served to break down some barriers that until now had been insurmountable for this Barça team. Winning at grounds like Espanyol or Valencia are two examples.

The trophies keep coming to fill the museum's showcases. Records and stratospheric statistics that this team achieve now fill the pages of the history of football and this year, in addition, Guardiola’s players have overcome the challenges that had resisted them until now: 

            First wins at certain grounds

The stadiums of Espanyol, Athletico Madrid and Valencia had given up poor results up to last season in the league. At Athletico Madrid, Barça had suffered two defeats (4-3) and (2-1). In Espanyol's new stadium they had only been capable of drawing 0-0, and at Valencia they didn’t do better than draw 2-2 and 0-0 in the first two seasons. In the year 2010/11 Guardiola’s team won at all 3 grounds. 

            Unbeaten in the group stages

Four wins against Rubin, Copenhagen, and Panathinaikos twice, and two draws against Copenhagen and Rubin away were the results achieved in the group stage of the Champions League. In previous years they had lost one game in each of the same stages, against Shakhtar and Rubin Kazan.

            Away wins in knockout phase

Despite having won the Champions League in 2008/2009 and 2010/2011, and have reached the semi-final in 2009/2010, oddly enough they had never won an game away in the knockout phase. This year, they finally broke the curse at Shakhtar in the quarter-finals, which Barça won 1-0. 

            Messi has now scored against Mourinho and in England

The 53 goals scored by Leo Messi this season have meant a lot, above all for scoring against a team led by Mourinho, and also for scoring in England for the first time in his career. Against Moorinho’s Madrid he scored 3 times, 1 in the League and 2 in the Champions League, and an English soil he scored goal in the legendary Wembley Stadium.