Sevilla v Barcelona Spanish Supercup Preview

By: Anthony | August 14th, 2010

ESPAÑA: SUPERCOPA DE ESPAÑA Tomorrow we face our first major test of the 2010-2011 campaign before the league has even begun! We face off against Barcelona in the Supercopa de España as last season’s Copa del Rey winners. As we all know, Barça were La Liga Champions and arguably the best team in Europe. Both us and Barça have won this competition once in the past 3 years and will be looking to do so for the second time in four seasons starting tomorrow.

While there is no question about who has the stronger squad, there is a little bit more significance to this game than just any other match between us. Nothing can be taken for granted in two-legged affairs like this Supercopa one as just this past season we eliminated the mighty Barça from the Copa del Rey which obviously we eventually went on to win. Also, of course of recent our once star left-back, Adriano Correia was transferred to the Catalàn club just like Dani Alves and Seydou Keita in previous years. No doubt there will be a little bit of friendly competition amongst Adriano and his new squad with his former teammates.

One thing that must be noted is the fact that we are just coming off a week where there were many international friendlies played and having the superstar squad that Barça does, it must be expected that fatigue may be a factor. This could obviously work in our favour as even Victor Valdés has to play due to an injury Pinto is struggling to recover from despite having just returned to training from his summer vacation. Having said all that though, unfortunately Álvarez will have to contemplate very carefully what lineup he plays as we have a very important Champions League game on Wednesday against Portuguese side Braga.

Despite coming off a somewhat of a disappointing loss to Espanyol in the Trofeo Carranza which was decided in penalties, this is a totally different match which a much greater reward. Three points are absolutely crucial if we have serious aspirations of adding another trophy to our cabinet. Going to the Camp Nou with nothing will be very difficult for us to achieve a result.

The 18 man squad selected by Álvarez is as follows; Palop, Javi Varas, Konko, Dabo, Fazio, Squillaci, Escude, Renato, Cigarini, Romaric, Zokora, Navas, Alfaro, Perotti, Diego Capel, Negredo, Kanoute and Luis Fabiano. With all the recent paper talk about LuFa going to Olympique Marseille its a huge personal concern about how well our star striker will play and if he does if it will be his last match in the colours of Sevilla. Players left out of the lineup due to injury or who are not fit, are Fernando Navarro, Lolo, Cala, Luna, José Carlos, Rodri, and the injured Guarente and Acosta.

With both teams set to be missing a few players tomorrow it is really anyone’s match. Barça will come out strong as usual but depending on the players that Guardiola has at his disposal, we may just have the upper hand. I am excited to see just how well our new signings Luca Cigarini and Mouhamadou Dabo perform against the strongest team in La Liga; hopefully they patch up the holes we had last season in both midfield and defense and show exactly why our transfer genius Monchi decided to bring them to Nervión.

¡¡Vamos mi Sevilla,
Vamos Campeón!!