Injury Report: Perfect Timing, Dani-boy

As if last night's result wasn't bad enough, Dani Alves came out of the mtch with a muscle rupture in his right leg that's put him out for an expected three to four weeks. Just what we needed. The injured list stretches on, and of all people it had to be Dani...

There goes our only rightback. That means that from now until Dani's all better, Carles Puyol is going to have to be starting on the right in his place, leaving Pep to choose from Pique, Marquez and Chygrynskiy as his centerbacks. And what with Chygrinskiy not allowed to particpate in the Champions League, Marquez is sure to start those matches alongside Pique, and we all saw how well that turned out yesterday...

Chygrynskiy isn't even back from his own injury yet. So no centerbacks to rotate with? And what happens if Pique or Marquez get injured or suspended for example? Bring on the B-team, right... Or Pep could always try throwing Yaya or Maxwell back in the center. Meh, we just hate injuries. Get well soon Dani-boy!

Gossip on the Guys: More Modeling For Leo

Leo Messi’s getting to be quite the little model, isn’t he? We don’t know when he found the time to do this what with the insanely hectic football schedule right now, but here he is in a photo-shoot for LadyStork shoes, for the second time.

We still can’t get over how dorky that name is, but Leo manages to come out anything but dorky with these casual poses. Judging by the haircut we’re going to hazard a guess that it was shot last month; in any case he’s looking just awesome!

Match Report: Barcelona 1-2 Rubin Kazan

After watching this match, we’re mainly thinking one thing: this is going to be a long, hard season. Barca won’t be skipping past opponent after opponent, demolishing all those who cross our path, not this time around.

A team we would have royally thrashed a year ago managed to calmly beat us last night, why is that? Because the boys were simply exhausted, and it showed. With so many exterior factors making the team suffer, Barca are probably worse off than any team in Europe this year:

The World Cup has stuck its arm out and given the season a good push, compressing all the matches into the shortest possible space of time to make way for itself. There’s not going to be a lot of time to prepare for the matches, and the players are going to be tired the way they were last night.

Of course, it’s like that for the rest of the clubs in Europe as well… but they didn’t win a treble last year. They didn’t have a preseason hampered by various Supercups, and they don’t have a Club World Cup coming up in December that will muddle everything up all over again.

Then there’s the fact almost every single one of our players, excepting maybe three or four, get called away to join their country squads when internationals hit. Then they come back exhausted or injured or both, with another match to play in a couple of days. That’s a couple of days to get back, recharge, shed the national skin and slip back into club-mode. Yeah, that’s never a huge success.

And when you’re Barca and you’re coming out of a mind-blowing treble triumph, everyone’s expecting the world from you. The pressure is gonna be on all season long, just like it was last night. Not only were they pressured, the boys were also dead tired, they didn’t have enough time to prepare for this, and several are out with injury or barely recovered. Oh, and add Dani Alves to that list: our only right-back is now out for around three weeks, just wonderful!

And given the circumstances, we think the boys did pretty well. Passing was great and we held fantastic possession, our counter attack was fast and we were creating chances. Just, it didn’t get too far past ­creating, because, like on the Mestalla, the buildup to the chances was slow and execution was poor; there was really not much threat on goal from us.

Victor Valdes and the entire team were caught off guard from the start, letting the opposition open up the scoring from the second minute. The rest of the first half passed by with a few un-dangerous attempts at scoring on our part, before Ibrahimovic finally found the net in the first minutes of the second half. The goal was spectacular and Xavi’s pass to him couldn’t have been more perfect; and can we stop to mention how uniquely alert and alive Ibra was last night? He played a pretty good match despite the tacky result, and things really seemed to pick up bit after he scored; he had us hopeful again, feeling like the second goal would come at any minute…

And oh, it did, but for Kazan, not Barca. And that was the crushing blow, as the match drew to an end with Barca desperately attacking to no avail.

Rubin Kazan are on top of the world, and we’re out of a match with no points for the first time this season. Inter Milan drew with Dynamo Kyiv, which pretty much puts all the teams in group F on common ground; the second leg will decide which two will go on to the last sixteen. We’re sure Barca can make it, but again: nothing’s going to be easy.

Champions League: FC Barcelon vs Rubin Kazan, Camp Nou, Tuesday, October 20 2009, 20:45 CET

Barca pick up where they left off in the Champions League, meeting Russian club Rubin Kazan at home in the final match of the group stages first leg. We'll be looking not just for a win that will keep Barca at the top of their CL group, but also for a clean sheet that will maintain the team's current form of not having conceded a single CL goal this season, something only three other teams have accomplished so far.

Pep's taking along the same eighteen men that traveled to Valencia - the only eighteen that are fit to play: Valdés, Pinto, Alves, Puyol, Piqué, Márquez, Abidal, Maxwell, Touré, Busquets, Keita, Xavi, Iniesta, Bojan, Pedro, Jeffren, Messi and Ibrahimovic. Though we expect to see a slightly different starting lineup this time, with Ibrahimovic most probably starting.

This match will also mark appearance number 452 with Barca for El Capitan, Carles Puyol. That will put him on par with Rexach as the player with the third highest number of appearances for the club, Xavi being second with 486, behind top-ranking Migueli who's got 548. Congrats in advance, Captain of ours!

Random: Barca Shirts For Barack Obama

For reasons that we don't know or really care about, the mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, wants U.S. president Barack Obama to visit the city. How does he intend to achieve this? By having sent Obama an invitiation... accompanied by two FC Barcelona shirts!

The way Señor Jordi sees it, the Barca shirt is the "most internationally recognized symbol of the city" which makes it in order to gift a pair of them to the president of the United States. Well, no one can argue that nothing represents Barcelona like the football club, but will Obama appreciate the shirts? He doesn't much strike us as the footie type.

Ah well, we'll just have to wait and see how he responds. Who knows, perhaps we'll see the president watching a game at the Camp Nou in the coming months.

Gossip on the Guys: Leo's Stubble For The Golden Ball

This picture of Lionel Messi was taken last month when he attended some women's wear fashion week thing in Uzbekistan. Don't ask us what he was doing there, but hello beard! Isn't he looking fine?

We're saddened though that Leo's let his hair grow out even more since then, and now he's sporting that long-stringy-hair-parted-over-a-headband look again. Dude, that is so two years ago, what happend to the short, sexy hair-falling-over-eye cut that we've come to love on you over the past season?

Okay, there is a point to this post, really. We just had to get that out. There. Now.

France Futbol magazine have just released their 30-man shortlist of nominees for this year's Balon D'or award. And even we are pleasantly surprised that it includes a total of six Barca players! Leo Messi leads the way of course, followed by each of Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Thierry Henry, Yaya Toure, and newcomer Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

It really is wonderful to see Barca so well represented in the buildup to such a prestigious award... but really, why do they even bother making a shortlist when the whole world knows that Leo and his stubbly chin cleft have as good as won this?

Match Report: Barcelona 0-0 Valencia

Looking at things from an outside perspective, what you see is this: most of the squad just returned from an exhausting international break, and directly went head to head with a top La Liga team, playing away without two of our star forwards. And we still managed a draw. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But that's just the outer view.

Because peering into what actually happened during the match, it's really not that pretty. Valencia were rocking to their own tune last night, they came to win and hell, with the way they played, they deserved to. The fact that they didn't, from the outside, would make it look like Barca fought back with enough effort to pull through with a draw. But that was hardly the case.

Barca are lucky to have drawn. That's what we have to thank, luck and a man named Victor Valdes. With Valencia coming out strong from the start, shutting down our midfield and being generally awesome in both attack and defense, their lack of scoring is a wonder and ours is none at all.

Victor was incredible, hands down the man of the match. His saves were absolutely brilliant, and again, no matter what fumbles he may make all season, it can't be argued that he's a star of a keeper and the man meant to stand between this Barca's goalposts. We're leading the Liga by a single point, and that point was single-handedly salvaged by Vic.

This match reminded us somewhat of last season's memorable second-leg against Chelsea: Our team dynamic was muddled up by the opposition, who started the match on top and kept the pressure on our goal, with our keeper saving the day again and again as our attack fought for a last-breath goal. Difference is, on Stamford Bridge the goal came. On the Mestalla it didn't.

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Because our ideas sucked last night. Valencia were the more organized team, the team that knew what they were doing, while our players were seemingly sleepwalking up and down the pitch. They woke up a little as the second half kicked off, and tried to attack more, but there was no intelligence in the way they attacked. They were not passing when they supposed to and taking the option they weren't supposed to, simply lacking instinct in front of the goal. It was like, if the chance isn't clear as day right in front of them, they don't know what to do to score.

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So thank goodness that our keeper was fantabulous and Valencia had Mata on instead of the injured Villa, who would have rocked the hell out of a couple of chances that Mata wasted. We'll take this result and run with it, because it's so awesome that we were able to come out with it.

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Yeah, our players were dead after the international break, we get it. But still, they really could have done better. Hey Pep, what's up? Lineup could have been better too - like we wouldn't have started the hello-can't-you-see-I'm-dead-tired Messi, let alone in the center, when there is a such thing as Bojan. But what's done is done and we managed to swipe up a point; we're shaky on the top of the table but we're still on the top. Now let's hope Real Madrid drop some points in the next four fixtures.

La Liga: FC Barcelona vs Valencia, Mestalla, Saturday, October 17 2009, 22:00 CET

We're finally back! And just in time for Barca's first match in two weeks, following the international break. The boys head out to a clash with Valencia that's got us pretty excited, particularly about facing David Villa, the Liga's current top-scorer, who has been confirmed to participate tonight after doubts had been circulating about wether he'd be able to make it because of injury.

Several of our players got a bit banged up here and there while on duty with thier national teams, in the end leaving Chygrynskiy and Henry on the injured list and unable to make the match. Out of the remaining available players Pep has selected the eighteen that will go to the Mestalla: Valdés, Pinto, Alves, Puyol, Piqué, Márquez, Abidal, Maxwell, Touré, Busquets, Keita, Xavi, Iniesta, Bojan, Pedro, Jeffren, Messi, Ibrahimovic.

The Blaugarana world is looking for a win tonight that will not only keep Barca's place at the top of the Liga table, but will also mark the first time our club has ever opened the season with seven straight wins. Here's hoping for a satisfying result!

Random: We'll Be Back Soon!

A tremendous greeting to all our readers out there who have been waiting and wondering why we haven't been updating... this blog has not been abandoned, and hopefully it won't be anytime soon; it's simply a problem with our interent that is taking an annoyingly long time in getting fixed. Please bear with us until we can sort things out, and we'll soon be back and better than ever! Thanks!