\n<\/p>\n
FC Barcelona receives Villarreal this Saturday, the third-placed team in the League, with the intention of adding the three points and not leaving open the possibility that on Monday Real Madrid could close matchday 26 as the new leader of the Spanish First Division. Although the test will not be easy, since the ‘yellow submarine’ cannot fail either to not give Atl\u00e9tico the chance to tie it on points in the fight for bronze in the League.<\/p>\n
And the thing is, Bar\u00e7a has a complicated week ahead, full of challenges. This one for Villarreal is the first of seven days in which they have three momentous clashes. The three points against the ‘yellow’ are necessary<\/strong>since they play before the eternal rival and stumbling would mean leaving them the lead again on a plate.<\/p>\n Furthermore, losing at home before the momentous Copa del Rey clash next Tuesday, where they have the arduous task of turning around the 4-0 conceded in the first leg of the semis<\/strong> in the Metropolitano against Atl\u00e9tico de Madrid. Falling to the ‘yellow submarine’ could make the air heat up around the Camp Nou in the face of this decisive cup clash.<\/p>\n In just three days they could lose the leadership of the League and be out of the defense of the Cup title, or on the contrary, they could do well and maintain the lead in the competition and achieve the feat of lifting the defeat received against the red and whites.<\/p>\n Two clashes in which he could leave on a stretcher or through the front door, it all depends on what Flick’s men are capable of. As if that were not enough, next weekend they have another brave bull to deal with in the League, with their visit to La Catedral.<\/p>\n And Hansi Flick has a new problem. He will not be able to count on Frenkie de Jong<\/strong>who will be out for five to six weeks due to a muscle injury to the distal biceps of his right leg, which he suffered last Thursday during training. <\/p>\n “First team player Frenkie de Jong has injured the distal biceps of his right leg in training. Tests confirm that the time of the recovery process recovery will be between 5 and 6 weeks<\/strong>“, announced the Blaugrana club in a statement. <\/p>\n De Jong will not be able to play this weekend in the important match against Villarreal, this Saturday at the Camp Nou, and could miss around eight games between the League, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n For its part, Villarreal is faced with the challenge of getting a victory that would be very important in its particular fight with Atl\u00e9tico for third place in the standings. Although the statistics are not on the side of his coach, Marcelino Garc\u00eda Toral.<\/p>\n The only two wins that the Villarreal coach has achieved in LaLiga have been with the Castell\u00f3n team and at home, circumstances that will occur again in the duel between both teams this Saturday.<\/p>\n The Asturian coach accumulates 23 games against Barcelona in the League and only two victories<\/strong>which have occurred in Villarreal’s last two visits to the Catalan team, 3-5 in the 2023-2024 season and 2-3 last year.<\/p>\n The Asturian coach’s balance in these other 21 matches has been 14 defeats and seven draws, with 16 goals for and 52 against.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Aware of these bad statistics against Bar\u00e7a, Marcelino admitted that he would like Barcelona to pay more attention to the second leg of the Copa del Rey next week against Atl\u00e9tico de Madrid than to the match they will play, but he said that he does not believe that will be the case. <\/p>\n “They are used to playing every three days and with maximum demands. They play to win each game and the Cup to reach the final. I hope they are very distracted, that they think about the Cup where they have than to lift an adverse result (4-0)<\/strong> and think that in the league they have other opportunities, but I think that will not be the case. Although I absolutely buy the idea,” he said.<\/p>\n “It’s 90 minutes and they may be looking a little askance at the Cup tie,” the coach admitted in a press conference.<\/p>\n Marcelino stressed that his team must be ambitious. “We have a lot to gain and very little to lose and, from that perspective, we have to face it,” said the Asturian, who recalled that despite the difficulty cannot go “defeated, far from it” <\/strong>and he stressed that it is a “nice to play” match in a “new but not finished” stadium, in reference to the Camp Nou.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FC Barcelona receives Villarreal this Saturday, the third-placed team in the League, with the intention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/razak.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bar\u00e7a, without Frenkie de Jong<\/h2>\n
Marcelino’s statistics against Bar\u00e7a are not good<\/h2>\n
Marcelino entrusts himself to the Cup<\/h2>\n