Oct 16, 2011
FC Barcelona - 3, Racing Santander - 0
FC Barcelona went back to the top of La Liga with a 3-0 victory at home against Racing Santander. Lionel Messi scored twice on the night and Xavi scored once to give Barca a comfortable victory. Earlier on the night Real Madrid went on top with a 4-1 victory against Real Betis. We needed to respond to that and boy, we indeed did that without much sweat. With his goals tonight Messi has become the second highest goal scorer in the history of Barca. There was an expectation that Guardiola will hesitate to start Iniesta from start, but we were proven wrong. Guardiola lined up with Victor Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Maxwell, Thiago, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro, Villa and Messi. It was strange to see us playing with no holding midfielder, which meant if Racing put enough pressure in midfield we could have trouble.
Oct 14, 2011
FC Barcelona vs Racing Santander Preview
The cartoon featured today on Sport.es right expresses the anxiety we Barca fans have about International breaks. It's not like we lost so much after International breaks, but there is no denial that a number of our lackluster performance came following the break. But this time around we shouldn't have such thoughts crossing our mind as the cartoon say "We got Andres Iniesta - The Anti FIFA Virus Guys". Iniesta has been declared fit last week and has been training with the B-Team. So he should be raring to go from the start. But Guardiola would only want to ease him slowly back into action. So he should get some playing time but not from the start. Meanwhile he could be pondering to rest Messi also especially after the South American players came only on Thursday. But the problem will be to telling that to Messi. Messi had a kind of confusing international outing - first he scored a goal after two years in Argentina colours in the victory against Chile. But then it went the other way when they lost to Venezuela in days. So he will be roaring to put that defeat past him. So will be Alves, who got himself sent of in 2-1 victory against Mexico.
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