Barca's defense of the Copa Del Rey title begins against third division club Cultural Leonesa. There's been talk that coach Pep Guardiola wouldn't be giving much importance to this competition in light of the tight match schedule, but Pep had something different to say at the pre-match press conference:
"We have the same motivation to win this competition as we had last year. We are Barca and here we don't throw away games or titles. We have to go out in every game with the idea of winning. We have to take the first step in winning the tie tomorrow."
That's the spirit Pep, we're going for everything and we'll win it all again, eh? Anyway, while Pep is adamant about taking the Copa seriously, he's chosen to rest six of his key players, giving each of Messi, Ibrahimovic, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta and Pique a couple of days off as the rest of the team trained, with five players called up from the reserve squad: Benítez, Fontàs, Jonathan Dos Santos, Jonathan Soriano and Gai.
Henry and Dani Alves are still out with injury, and as the Copa only allows five subs on the bench, Pep will be leaving out one player from the the following seventeen-man squad: Valdés, Pinto, Benítez, Chygrynskiy, Márquez, Fontàs, Abidal, Maxwell, Touré, Jonathan dos Santos, Busquets, Gai Assulin, Keita; Pedro, Jeffren, Bojan and Jonatan Soriano.
Bojan will obviously be starting seeing as our usual attackers are being rested (or injured, in Titi's case) so we're tremendously excited about that; Baby Bo's not been getting as much game time as he should. We're looking forward to seeing the B-team youngsters as well, and especially Jonathan Dos Santos - here's hoping the boys make us proud!
Saturday, Saturday
1 day ago
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