Barça have decided that one of the players they most want for next season is Lyon’s Karim Benzema. Txiki Begiristain travelled to Lyon yesterday where he met with Lyon’s Director of Sport, Bernard Lacombe, and he watched Benzema score in the 1-0 win over Metz in the French Cup. Keep reading →

One of the greatest goalscorers of all time, Romario de Souza, has announced at the age of 42 that he is retiring. ‘El Baixinho’ signed for Barça in the summer of 1993 and became an immediate hit by scoring a hat-trick on his league debut against Real Sociedad. He went on to score thirty league goals that season including four more hat-tricks against Real Madrid, Osasuna and Atletico Madrid twice. Keep reading →

Johan Cruyff in his weekly column today took an optimistic view towards the coming Champions League semi final, pointing out that Manchester United will fear Barça just as much as Barça fear them. I’m not quite sure if that is 100% true but they certainly won’t think it is going to be easy. Keep reading →

Barça once again paid the price for individual errors and had to settle for just one point that sees our chances of winning the league reduced to practically nil. The only positive points to take from the night were the two goals from Samuel Eto’o and the return of Leo Messi. Unfortunately the five weeks out meant that Messi was not as sharp as usual and he wasted two decent chances to win the game for Barça. Keep reading →

As already mentioned in a previous comments section Leo Messi has been included in the squad for tomorrow evening’s match in Huelva against Recreativo (kick off 10pm). Messi has trained normally with the group this week but his inclusion is still a bit of a surprise and slightly sooner than the six weeks that was initially talked about as the time of his recovery. Keep reading →

Apologies to anyone who saw the original headline, the game will now be played on Saturday at 8pm thanks to Barça appealing to the better senses of the people in charge. Originally the game was going to be played on Sunday as Canal+ wanted to show the game, but due to Barça playing Man United on Wednesday 23rd they will now have an extra day’s preparation.

According to both major Catalan sports papers Ronaldinho’s transfer to AC Milan is as good as done. Txiki Begiristain met Ernesto Bronzetti, acting for Milan, yesterday to discuss a transfer fee which is supposedly in the region of thirty million euros. Later Bronzetti met Ronaldinho’s brother, Roberto de Assis, to discuss personal terms, and in the evening De Assis was flown in Silvio Berlosconi’s personal jet to have dinner with Milan administrator Adriano Galliano. Keep reading →

The club have reported that Andres Iniesta has a “pinzamiento en el menisco externo” of his left knee. It is times like this I wish I knew more about anatomy. I understand this to be a pinched nerve in the lateral meniscus. The club are running tests to see how serious the problem is. I’m afraid at present I can’t say what this means. I’ll try to keep you posted on the latest reports. If anyone knows anything about this type of injury please send a comment.

Readers have voted Bojan Krkic as Barça’s best player in March with 46% of the vote. I have to say I still think Iniesta deserved to win. Maybe Bojan won more votes because he is cuter! Anyway this will now remain in the polls catagory to make way for the new sidebar poll on who should make way for Messi when he returns. I have a feeling I know who will win this one.

Barça have reached the semi-finals of the Champions League after beating Schalke 04 1-0 (2-0 on aggregate) and will now face Manchester United for a place in the final in Moscow on May 21st. However, the performance, especially in the first half left a lot to be desired. Whether the recent declarations from directors had a negative effect I cannot say, but for the first half an hour Barça played so badly it looked more likely that they would get knocked out. Keep reading →