Rubi and Roura will be overseeing the team as they face the European Pretenders, and try to put a halt to the Bavarian aspirations with the resources and energy they currently have.
The German team has played remarkable football in the few friendly games under the new leadership of Guardiola, scoring 35 goals in six matches. It has also become obvious what Guardiola meant by saying he needed Thiago in his team, after the young Spanish player managed to shine in his two games with his new club, settling any doubts about his impact in a star-studded midfield, and scoring a cheeky goal using his chest.
While Guardiola experiments with different tactics, playing Ribery in the middle, shuffling his frontline so that there are six players alternating between midfield and attack, Barcelona will go in for its first stretch of legs of the new season. Although there are 12 players available from the 1st team, the majority are still on vacation after their exploits in the Confederations Cup, both from the Spanish and Brazilian sides. The available players are: Pinto, Montoya, Bartra, Mascherano, Adriano, Song, Sergi Roberto, Dos Santos, Messi, Tello, Alexis, and finally Oier, who is so far being reported as a first team player. If so, this is an indication that he will be getting more games this season to test him out before Valdés exits next year.
The rest of the numbers will be made up of the 11 Barça B players: Ilie Sánchez, Carles Planas, Javi Espinosa, Sergi Gómez, Joan Román, Kiko Femenía, Partic Gabarrón, Dongou Tsafack, Dani Nieto, Jordi Quintillà, and Sergi Samper.
Messi has finally had some rest, after what has been called his longest stretch of vacation in a number of years. Our Captain, Carles Puyol, is still out after three operations in a single year, and he is vowing to come back only when he’s at 100 percent fitness, as to not hurt himself again by rushing through his recovery in record time like he usually does. Last year’s loanees, Cuenca and Afellay, are both unfit, although Cuenca is closer to making his comeback.
Jonathon dos Santos remains in the team even though this is the second summer running that the club has attempted to offload him to no effect. He remains keen to prove himself at Barça, even in the light of the reported interest of Champion League hopefuls, Real Sociedad. How much playing time he will get remains to be seen, especially if he incoming coach has other ideas about his usefulness to the team.
What is expected in this game is that Sergi Roberto will be given a starting berth, and probably play the longest minutes of any player on Wednesday in Munich. With Thiago on the other side of the pitch, all eyes will be on Sergi to justify the Catalan board’s promotion of him as Thiago’s replacement.
Possible Lineups
Just for the fun of it, we’ll propose the below names as the starting players of each team, keeping in mind that in these sorts of games, the coaches would play the janitors if they could just to see what would happen.
Bayern Munich Starting XI: Neuer, Philipp Lahm, Daniel van Buyten, Jerome Boateng, Diego Contento, Toni Kroos, Martinez, Thiago, Arjen Robben, Franck Ribéry, Thomas Müller
FC Barcelona Starting XI: Pinto, Montoya, Bartra, Mascherano, Adriano, Song, Dos Santos, Sergi Roberto, Tello, Messi, Alexis
Result
The result really has no impact on the season whatsoever, especially with this being the first game of the preseason for FC Barcelona. However, the fact remains that even with this incomplete team, it still has enough quality to beat most teams in Europe on any given day. What’s exciting is to see next year’s Barça B players participating, and identifying the near future’s gems. After that, let’s hope the club keeps them.
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