Cesc Fabregas has officially signed the deal with FC Barcelona which will keep him at the club till 2016. He earlier had the official medical test done and cleared. The club has revealed that his buyout clause has been kept at 200 Million. There are steady rumours that he now will make his official Barca debut against Real Madrid at Camp Nou, maybe from the bench. Follow the link for more pics.
The first leg of the Spanish Super Cup of this season ended with a thoroughly entertaining 2-2 draw at the Santiago Bernebeu stadium in Madrid. Realm madrid fans would have been wondering how on earth they failed to save the match, may be how on earth we scored two goals. I haven't seen a Barca side in near memory being so overly dominated especially in the midfield. And to be honest a 2-2 draw was a bit unfair to Real Madrid, but then you have to put down your chances. As I said in the preview Real madrid had an extensive pre-season with the majority of first teamers constantly palying together and that really showed in their performance.Guardiola decided to start both Pique and Busquets who were carrying knocks from the bench. The official line-up had Valdes on goal, Alves, Mascherano, Abidal and Adriano in defense. Thiago, Keita and Iniesta made the midfield. Alexis, Messi and Villa made the front trio. Victor Valdes was given the honour of leading the side. I have to admit that I was not keen on two selection in theat line-up - 1) Keita playing the defensive midfield role and 2) Alexis starting as he has never played along with any of theese guys. The atmosphere for the tie had already become volatile with some crazy people stoning the bus carrying Barcelona directors. Mourinho started with Casillas, Ramos, Pepe, Carvalho, , Marcelo, Alonso, Khedira, Di Maria, Ozil, Ronaldo, Benzema.
FC Barcelona will be playing their first competitive match of the 2011-12 season at Santiago Bernebeu stadium tomorrow night. The Spanish Super cup in contrast to their Premier League rivals is a two legged affair and we do have the advantage of playing teh second leg at home. Real Madrid and Barcelona had kind of a contrasting pre-season tour. Real Madrid won almost all their pre-season matches and did score lots of goals in those. In contrast we had a mixed result with wins and loss sandwiched between the draws. It is not a big matter of concern for us as we played our kids in most of the matches, whereas they played the stablished stars. Still the fact that majority of their stars has been playing togetehr in the pre-season gives them a bit more better preperation. But then ours is a team where the first eleven hasn't much changed in the last two seasons and should feel fine without much pre-season togetherness. We saw the example of that last season when Messi waljed into the team just like that in the second leg of super leg and won us the match. The build up to the Super Cup has been a very quiet affair till now but it is expected to get heaten up once the first leg get over at Madrid, the reason - Jose Mourinho.
