Defeat in the quarter finals of the African Cup Of Nations is the last possible chance of Samuel Eto’o or Toure Yaya coming home early. If Toure’s Ivory Coast lose to Guinea on Sunday or Eto’o’s Cameroon lose to Tunisia on Monday, they will be back to play at Sevilla next Saturday. If their teams get through we will have to wait until the following weekend’s game at Zaragoza to see them again as Blaugranas.

Ivory Coast are clear favourites to beat Guinea in Sekondi. Guinea finished second with four points in Group A behind host nation Ghana, while Ivory Coast won all three games in Group B to finish top. The game is on Sunday at 9.30pm (Spanish time). The winners will play the winners of the Egypt-Angola game in Thursday’s semi final.

Cameroon have a tougher test on Monday. Tunisia finished top of Group D after winning one and drawing the other two games. Cameroon finished a point behind Egypt in Group C after two wins and the 4-2 defeat against the Egyptians. The game takes place in Tamale and also kicks off at 9.30pm. The winners will face either Ghana or Nigeria in the other semi final on Thursday.

Even if they lost in the semi finals both players would still have to play in the 3rd place match on Saturday and so would not be available for Barça. There must be a chance Tunisia can beat Cameroon, and Barça could certainly do with having Eto’o back against Sevilla. He can really make the difference to both our away form and our recent goalscoring record.