Match day ultimately! FC Barcelona are in the US for his or her summer time tour, and simply 48 hours after touching down in Florida, they’re straight into motion with the primary sport of the preseason. The venue is the 60,219 capability Tenting World Stadium in Orlando and the opposition are the defending Premiership champions Manchester Metropolis, additionally winners of the Champions League a few seasons in the past, managed after all by an outdated good friend in Pep Guardiola.
Kick-off is at 7pm native time on Tuesday (1am on Wednesday morning CEST) for what guarantees to a superb encounter, though either side might be lacking a number of the larger names who reached the latter levels of Euro 24 and the Copa America. And for Barça, it is an particularly necessary event, as a result of this would be the very first sport beneath model new supervisor Hansi Flick.
Barça go into this sport with none of the members of the Euro 24 successful Spanish squad, or the trio of Pau Cubarsí, Fermín López and Eric Garcia who’re away on the Paris Olympics, in addition to Jules Kounde, who reached the Euro semi-finals with France. Germans Ter Stegen and Ilkay Gündogan, in addition to Raphinha of Brazil, have reported to the workforce camp for responsibility, however it’s most likely too early to count on them to characteristic on this sport.
Metropolis already rolling
One curiosity about this sport is it brings collectively the one two coaches to have led a workforce to the unimaginable document of all six main trophies in the identical yr. Guardiola did it with Barça and Flick with Bayern.
And whereas that is the primary sport of the preseason for the Catalans, for Man Metropolis it’s already their third. They misplaced 4-3 to Celtic in North Carolina, after which 3-2 to AC Milan in New York, so might be particularly eager to get their first win beneath their belt. Though a lot of their largest names are nonetheless lacking, neither of Erling Haaland or Jack Grealish performed on the Euros, and so they’re each set to play right here.