Barcelona to play without their Captain, Gerard Pique and Lionel Messi
Since the Supreme Court’s decision is not favouring the cause of the Spanish La Liga players, the Spanish Champions are going to play their first match on 2nd January 2011. As the players in the second and third tier
were not paid for the past five months, all the La Liga players decided to go out on a strike until the 2nd of January, which would have caused the Spanish Football Federation a big loss. However, now the Supreme Court has directed that the matches
scheduled for the 2nd will be held as per announced and any player who does not perform on that particular date is going to be fined.
With this decision finalized, Barcelona are going to be facing Levante in their first 2011 fixture of the Spanish La Liga. Their newly signed Dutch youngster http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Ibrahim-Afellay-c16547 is not going to feature in this game because he could
not register for the match on time; however, he is not the only player who is going to be missing out.
Barcelona are going to be starting their New Year without http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Gerard-c14664 Pique as they face Levante on Sunday. These three players have been crucial for the Catalan Giants, as they have featured the most
for La Blaugrana. Moreover, the Catalan triad has been consistently performing for Josep Guardiola and without them Barcelona might find it hard to maintain the pressure on Real Madrid.
“Pep” barely leaves Messi out of his plans, but the Argentinean maestro has taken special permission from the boss to stay in his home country for a longer period. The Catalans have missed out on “Leo” on three occasions this season,
against Sporting Gijon, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Athletic-Club-c38535 and Ceuta. Regardless of the fact that the 23-year-old Argentinean is the highest goal scorer for his club, they still won all those games.
The Catalan centre back, Gerard Pique received a fifth yellow card in Cornella El-Prat, as Barcelona were to face their local city rivals Espanyol. According to the rules of Spanish La Liga, the Spaniard will miss this game due
to suspension. Even though Pique’s partnership with Carles Puyol is very crucial for Barcelona, the Catalan Giants have managed to do without him during five games this season.
Barcelona won both, home and away, legs without the former Manchester United player, as they were to face the second tier team Ceuta in a Cup match. La Blaugrana also played without him against Villarreal, Real Sociedad and Almeria
in the Spanish La Liga and managed to win all three of them. However, the Catalans did suffer a loss without their first-choice centre back when they visited Sanchez Pizjuan in the first leg of the Super Cup and suffered a 3-1 loss to Sevilla.
So far, this season, Barcelona have won all games in which Carles Puyol was there to take charge of the team as a http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Captain-c8314. However, without him there has been a mixed bag of results. Without their captain, Barcelona lost against
the newly promoted Spanish La Liga side Hercules and could not pick up a win against Sevilla either. Later, they also drew against Mallorca and Athletic Club in which Puyol was missing out. Even though this does not really look good for Barcelona, La Blaugrana
did actually emerge victorious in a few games without him. The Spanish Champions won games against Racing Santander, Rubin Kazan, Ceuta and Sevilla as all these games took place in four different competitions.
Barcelona’s most recent triumph, without Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol, was against Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League. In the home leg, both the centre backs were suspended and Josep Guardiola played Eric Abidal and Gabriel
Milito in the centre as http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Maxwell-c25051 featured on the left. With this formation, the Spaniards won the game 4-1 at the Nou Camp with all goals coming from Lionel Messi.
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