Mascherano Extends Barca stay to 2016

Mascherano Extends Barca Stay

Javier Mascherano signed a new deal today which will keep him at Barcelona till the end of June, 2016. The club has raised his buyout clause to 100 million Euros, which may be an indication of how important he has become in the scheme of things at Barca. Mascherano, who was incidently signed as a cover for the defensive midfielder role has established himself as the most important element in Barca's central defense. He has been a regular in all of the most important fixtures and the fact that he started ahead of Puyol in the final at Wembley a season ago is a testimony of that. The signing of the deal took place at the Club office in the presence of Sandro Rosell, Josep Bartomeu and Andoni Zubizarreta.

Brilliant FC Barcelona destroys Raja Club Athletic in Pre-Season Friendly

All the Goals from FC Barcelona vs Raja Club Athletic.

FC Barcelona - 8 : Raja Club Athletic - 0

A Not-So Friendly Affair

• Absence of Major Stars annoys Hamburg Fans.
• Messi was ruled out following a last minute injury.

FC Barcelona vs Hamburg Controversy

Barcelona management wouldn't have anticipated how quickly a normal pre-season friendly turned out to be everything other than that. The club and fans were worried after the 2-1 victory at Hamburg and that was due to the injury to Muniesa. He was supposed to start featuring in first team plans this season, so that was the main worry for the club. But there was a PR disaster happening somewhere else. Hamburg fans, and rightly so was really upset to see Barca play a second string side and to make it worse the tickets were priced higher than usual. No one will want to pay more than usual to watch a Barca B+ match. And to make matters worse it wasn't some ordinary match - it was a match to celebrate the 125 years of the Club. Hamburg management did kind of anticipate the chance of something like this happening and actually had a close for penalty if Messi didn't play. Because of that Barca will get only 800,000 Euros instead of the agreed upon 1.2 Million. The entire mess was created by short sightedness of both club management and some seriously unanticipated circumstances. The latest news we have heard is that the Hamburg club is issuing refunds to fans.

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