December 2008 - Posts

• Alves and Keita show humanitarian side

  Barcelona's summer signings Dani Alves and Seydou Keita are two players who can appreciate the lifestyles they are now leading after difficult starts in life and they have come together to support a charity calendar. "With the little that we do we can help a lot and so the least we can do is put ourselves at the disposal of projects like this," says Alves, who particularly hopes to raise aids awareness. "This is the type of illness that you come across a lot of time without knowing about it especially as it can be inherited from parents. The only thing you can do is be strong so as to cope with the negative aspects of life. "You must never relax and take things easy because in life the most important is to be strong whether you are ill or not." Keita has been in Europe for ten years but he is still aware of the problems back home in his native Mali. "I consider myself fortunate that nobody close to me has died from an illness associated with poverty but I am happy to help with things like this as these illnesses are present and causing a lot of pain. In Africa there are a lot of problems with malaria and we all have to help and do what we can do to eradicate it," he said. Both Alves and Keita have made impressive starts to their Barca careers, the Brazilian in particular has made the right-back position his own while Keita is keeping Yaya Toure out of the team in midfield. Posted Dec 26 2008, 12:24 PM by Tim with 3 comment(s)

• Barca keep tabs on Perez

  Barcelona are following closely the progress of Uruguayan full-back Matias Perez and sports director Txiki Beguiristain has held a couple of meetings with his agent although nothing yet has been decided. The left-back position at Barca is an area the club want to reinforce as currently the only cover for Eric Abidal is the aging Sylvinho and they now have in their sights 23-year-old Perez who they consider to be a player for the future. The player for Danubio in Uruguay likes to get forward and has been compared to Dani Alves on the right-hand side. In the recent apertura campaign in Uruguay he scored three goals in eleven matches. Txiki has spoken with his counterpart at Danubio Raul Sanllehi and one of the options for Barca is to buy Perez and then loan him out to give him more experience of European football Posted Dec 26 2008, 12:05 PM by Tim with 1 comment(s)

• Messi happy with Lyon draw

  Argentine Lionel Messi says that although he knows it will be a tough game, he is happy with the Champions League draw against Lyon. "I have seen the teams come out and it is fine, it is a difficult opponent and people may think that they are a team without a big name but we know it will be far from easy," he said. "There is still some way to go before the match but I hope that we are in the same condition that we are now when we do face them. At the moment though we are just thinking of the Villarreal game this weekend." About the threat from Lyons Benzema. "We have to worry about all their players when we face them not just Benzema because they are a good team with a lot of good players," he added.   Posted Dec 19 2008, 10:29 AM by Tim with no comments

• Arshavin in Barca plea

  Barcelona is the favoured destination of Zenit St Petersburg's Andrei Arshavin with the player issuing a come and get me plea. The Russian international has been given permission to talk to other interested and he made it clear where he would like a move to. "Stoichkov, Romario, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho were all my idols when I was growing up, all the players of Barcelona of whom I was a fan as I liked there style," he said. The 27-year-old striker has been linked with several clubs in Spain and England and is likely to move in January.   Posted Dec 17 2008, 12:13 AM by Tim with 2 comment(s)

• Henry refuses to be carried away by euphoria

  Barca striker Thierry Henry believes that while they have won the battle against Real Madrid the war still needs to be finished off and the players cannot allow themselves to relax. "We are happy and we must enjoy the moment, to win the clasico is always important and to do it in the final minutes is incredible but at the end of the day they are just three more points towards the championship and there are a lot of games still to be played," he said. Dani Alves, too, refused to wipe out the threat from Real Madrid despite the fact the bitter enemy have now fallen to sixth in the table. "Our intention was to get the win independent of who was the rival, we now need to listen to the coach and continue in the path that we are following. Real Madrid were a difficult side to play but we worked hard and came out on top, to me it is not important how many points they are now behind because they remain a threat and we have to be wary of them," he said.    Posted Dec 15 2008, 12:44 AM by Tim with 2 comment(s)

• El Clasico victory another success for Guardiola

  The victory over Real Madrid reinforced the progress Barcelona have made this season and highlighted the success of making Pep Guardiola the new coach last summer.  Favourites for the league and having qualified well also for the next stage of the Champions League but more than anything it has been the way that Barca have played their football, maintaining the 4-3-3 system brought in by Rijkaard and also flooding the first team with youth players. The team has not been beaten in the league now since the first week of the season against Numancia in Soria. In fact only Racing Santander and Getafe have even managed a draw at Camp Nou. Guardiola's message though remains the same that the team must not get carried away with the good results so far as it would effect their play and mean they fall into the trap of Rijkaard's side after they won the 2006 Champions League final, he feels that this is the biggest danger to them. In the famous 'Tourmalet' in the run-up to Christmas they have now faced Sevilla, Valencia and Real Madrid winning each of these battles comfortably. All that remains now is the visit to Villarreal next weekend to reinforce their authority on all those aspiring to win the championship. Praise for Guardiola has come from all corners including former vice-president Sandro Rosell who after several months of silence claimed that it would be ideal if the former Barca player could become the Alex Ferguson of the Catalan club.       Posted Dec 15 2008, 12:04 AM by Tim with 1 comment(s)