With yet another annoying international break Frank Rijkaard finds himself without thirteen players who have all been called up by their respective national teams. Rijkaard will therefore have very little time to prepare the game away to Villarreal on Saturday 20th October. Barça have failed to win only two games this season and both came after international breaks.

The player who will be worst affected by his travels will be Ronaldinho. Brazil play away to Columbia on Sunday and they then have a home game with Ecuador on Wednesday 17th which due to the time differences will kick off at 02.45h on Thursday morning Spanish time. If Ronnie flies back after the game he won’t arrive in Barcelona until Thursday evening leaving only one day to train with his team mates and recover from the jet-lag.

Giovani dos Santos will be similarly affected as Mexico also play on Sunday, a friendly at home to Nigeria, and then on Wednesday (Thursday morning Spanish time) against Guatemala in another friendly which will take place in Los Angeles, USA.

Leo Messi and Gabi Milito will have one more day to recover as Argentina’s games are on Saturday, at home to Chile, and on Tuesday (Wednesday morning in Spain) away to Venezuela.

Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol have been called up by Luis Aragones for the important game in Denmark on Saturday, and the pointless friendly in Finland on Wednesday.

Thuram, Abidal and Henry will travel to the Faroe Islands to represent France on Saturday, France then play Lithuania in Nantes on Wednesday.

Deco will represent Portugal in their games in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, while Eidur Gudjohnsen has been called up for Iceland’s games at home to Latvia and away to Liechenstein.

Finally, Bojan Krkic will travel to Poland where Spain’s under-21s play on Friday.

Local newspaper “El Sport” reported that altogether Barça players will travel a total of 144,600 kilometres. I wonder which office junior was given the job of working that one out.