Sunday&Monday summary

After their win in Zaragoza, the squad were back in training on Sunday morning. One of the most important elements of this morning’s session was the presence of thirteen B team players, with Dos Santos, Nolito, Fontàs, Riverola, Benja, Thiago, Saúl, Rochina, O. Romeu, Miño, V. Vázquez, Edu Oriol and Bartra joining in with the first team squad.

Guardiola decided to give eight of his players –Puyol, Pique, Iniesta, Alves, Messi, Villa, Valdés and Busquets, a rest, but the last three decided to come in anyway and do some gentle recovery work, whilst Xavi and Milito also continued with their own treatment apart from the rest of the group.






Seydou Keita spoke after training on Sunday morning and stressed the good performances and results the team are putting in, whilst explaining how keen he is to start this season’s assault on the Spanish Cup. (read more -click)

Ten first team players and six from Barça B will make the trip to Ceuta on Tuesday as Barça open their Spanish Cup campaign. The Cup rules state that the squad must be 16 strong and a maximum of six non-first team players can be named. The trip to Ceuta will be unusual for the team, who will fly to Malaga, before taking a helicopter flight over into the African continent. The squad are due to touch down in Ceuta at 12.30.

The full list given by Guardiola this morning is: Pinto, Puyol, Abidal, Maxwell, Adriano, Mascherano, Keita, Bojan, Jeffren, Pedro, Miño, Bartra, Fontàs, Thiago, Dos Santos and Nolito. Seven first team squad players -Valdés, Alves, Piqué, Busquets, Iniesta, Messi and Villa -are still enjoying the short break Guardiola gave them after the Zaragoza game.

The squad for the Ceuta game, with the exception of Pinto who had the club’s permission to miss the session for family reasons, trained at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper this morning. In addition, Valdes came along and worked out with a coach, before joining the rest of the group, whilst Xavi and Milito continued with their own recovery programmes.












Barça begin their campaign to regain the Spanish Cup when they travel to the North African enclave of Ceuta on Tuesday and Guardiola commented: “It’s not a chore at all - I’m looking forward to the game, When you play a team you don’t know, you always pick up something new”. If you want to know what else Pep said at meeting with press click (here), pay attention to Pep's clothes and shoes (sorry for poor quality but couldn't find better pictures)


On official website there is interesting piece sbout new system 3-4-3 (click for more)

Last training this week and some news

Barça have held the third and final training session in a week marked by the absence of the internationals. 12 players were involved, six from the first team and six from Barça B. Puyol and Jeffren did recovery work. Tito Vilanova took charge of the training session again on pitch number 2 at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper. Dani Alves, who from tomorrow will be working with his Brazilian colleagues at the Ciutat Esportiva, has voluntarily accepted to train with Barça for these three days.
The players now have four days off and won’t be back together until Tuesday, when they will start preparing for the league visit of Hercules to the Camp Nou on Sunday.

But wait! There are photos of course!






There is also important news from our internationals: Iniesta's injury :/ "World Cup final goal hero Iniesta suffered an ankle knock in training ", Del Bosque said that"Andres only suffered a blow from which I don`t think any problem will arise,"(read more here),I hope it's not serious one.

Valdés’ save from Tchité on Sunday was the seventh time he’d stopped a penalty for Barca, so to celebrate on official website there is article about penalties he saved in his career (click for more)

Keita spoke with press today. Seydou Keita is certain that Barça will have another great season. “We have a winning squad and we’ll be going out to win” said the Malian. “But who knows what might happen after that”.(If you want to read more -click)


Some weeks ago there was great article about Pedro in El Mundo Deportivo (click here), but there is also English translation (click to read)

Training, Keita's contract and more

Good news today, our hardworking player, Seydou Keita has extended his contract with the club until 2014! Seydou Keita’s contract was set to finish in 2012, but today’s deal could keep him at the club for a further two years with an extra 10 million also added to his buyout clause. On official website there is also nice article about him (click to read more)
Here is short video



With the internationals away with their national teams, Pep Guardiola joined his seven available first team players, including latest signing Javier Mascherano, with the B team for training this morning. The six first team squad members at Guardiola’s disposition were Pinto, Abidal, Maxwell, Adriano, Keita and Alves, who will join up with Brazil on September 2nd and came along to training today despite being given the day off.







After a busy day of presentations yesterday, new signing Javier Mascherano enjoyed his first training session at the club this morning when he joined a reduced number of first team players at the Ciutat Esportiva. With the session due to start at 09.00 this morning, Mascherano arrived half an hour early and was met by first team delegate Carlos Naval, who presented him to his new teammates and backroom staff as they arrived.
Here is video


And some nice photos






FC Barcelona and Birmingham City have agreed a deal that will take Alexander Hleb to the Premier League club on a season’s loan.



Barca’s first team squad has again been reduced by international commitments – with just five players - Pinto, Abidal, Maxwell, Adriano and Keita left in Barcelona. (read more-click)

Late in the evening official website of FC Barcelona informed that our captain Carles Puyol and Jeffren Suárez (called for U-21) are coming back to Barcelona due to their injuries.

There are many great articles and interviews in newspapers, today I highly recomend:
- Johan Cruyf's oppinion abour Barca's squad (read English translation here)

- Interview with Pique in El Mundo Deportivo (read English translation here)

Press report

Some notes from newspapers and websites:

Dani Alves played 90 minutes with his national team. Brazil won with United States 2-0.



Abidal and Keita started Ramadan, both players are faithful to thier religion and tradition and the next 29 days will be fasting during daytime. Ramadan is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and sexual activities from dawn until sunset. But as you can imagine it's hard to be professional player without any eating and drinking. Medical services of Barca team prepared special minimal diet for the duration of Ramadan, that will prevent dehydration and allow players to be in shape to play games. Last year Keita scored 6 goals during Ramadan and each celebrated with typical muslim gestures of thanks to Allah.


Look at this great photo, it's advertisment of Assistència Sanitària, company which privides medical services to FCB. I think this photo is soo cool:) Look at Bojan- he looks like professional doctor.


Abidal has been called to testify in front of the French Federation on August 17th to give his views about what happened in South Africa and he claims: “I don’t know if there will be any more sanctions. I’ll listen to their questions and tell them what I think”.


Albert Jorquera ends his football career. He spent the bulk of his professional career with FC Barcelona (ten years, including loans), but could never be more than second or third-choice at his main club, which he left in 2009.

Best photos from Korea

Korean part of Asia tour is over, here are some great photos that I didn't post ealier, but I think they deserve to be shown.

What is soo funny in speaking at pressconference?

There were funny moments with coaches

Adriano is always smilling!

Messi had moments of joy with kids

Pinto looks serious on that one, but we know he is funny guy too

I love this photo!

On this one players looks like ghots

Zlatan is on diet ;)

Dani concentrated on ball

This photo is great too:)