Barca vs AC Milan UCL QF First Leg Preview

FC Barcelona has landed in Milan to face the holding Serie A Champiosn in the first leg of Quarter Finals of this year's UEFA Champions League. Barca fans were given a good news of Ibrahim Afellay being fit and he has made it into the squad which will face Milan tomorro at the San Siro. There has been a bit of concern about the state of San Siro pitch and how it will play. We could only hope that it plays better than the Arsenal vs Milan match in the last round. AC Milan was one of the teams which every Barca fan want to avoid at this stage, but we still have the advantage of playing the second match at Camp Nou. In the pursuit of La Liga and Champions League, this week could prove to be a pivotal one for FC Barcelona. We will be facing Milan at San Siro and in the weekend we will be hosting Biesla's Athletic Bilbao. Both the games have becom pivotal for Barca and we could not afford not to win any of those. The squad selected by Gaurdiola for this match includes Valdés, Pinto, Alves, Piqué, Fàbregas, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Alexis, Messi, Thiago, Mascherano, Keita, Sergio Busquets, Pedro, Afellay, I. Cuenca, Muniesa, Montoya, Oier, and Cristian Tello. Apart from Afellay's inclusion there wasn't much surprise in the list.

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Hard Fough Victory at Mallorca; Barca -2, Mallorca - 0

FC Barcelona cut down the lead at the top of the table to three points with a very hard working 2-0 victory against Real Mallorca. A brilliant free kick Messi and another goal from Pique was enough to see off the Mallorca challenge. It was a very tough match - having to play on a horribly dry pitch and also to have play with ten men for the last thrity five minutes after Thiago was sent off. But those factors didn't matter as our players played with their heart out and now the pressure will be on Real Madrid to regain their six point lead. Pep Guardiola went into this big away game with a three man defense of Mascherano, Pique and Puyol. Xavi started from the bench with an eye on AC Milan clash. So we had a midfield of Iniesta, Thiago, Busquets and Cesc Fabregas. Messi, Pedro and Sanchez made the front trio.

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Lionel Messi Creates History; FC Barcelona - 5, Granada - 3

FC Barcelona cut the lead on the top of the league to five points with a rather scrappy 5-3 win. Real madrid will have a chance to extend the lead, but for the time being we are five points below them. A hat-trick from Lionel Messi and one each from Xavi and Tello gave us a a deserving victory. It was a bit scrappy in some sense - we lead 2-0 with Granada completely out of the picture, then let them come back and make teh scoreline 2-2 but we woke up enough to finish off the game. All the eyes were on Messi building into this match. A recently conducted study has revealed that Cesar, the club's official top scorer has only scored 232 goals instead of the earlier believed 235. That meant Messi needed only one more goal to equalise that tally. The starting eleven selected by Guardiola was Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Adriano, Keita, Thiago, Xavi, Sanchez, Messi and Cuenca. Barca players lined up with "Fabrice. We are with you" T-Shirt showing their support for the Bolton player Fabrice Muamba, whose condition is said to be improving at the moment. Granada players lined up with a message showing their support for Eric Abidal, our King.

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