Valdés looking forward to clásicos

Roger Bogunyà

Víctor Valdés, after yet another great showing, has said the side is ready and waiting for the forthcoming encounters with Real Madrid: “We will go into the clásicos with the same enthusiasm. They will be very intense, but also great fun”.

Wednesday training

The FC Barcelona will stay the night in Donetsk and will train in the Ukrainian city in the morning at 11.00 am (CET). After that, they will fly back to Barcelona.

The Barça goalkeeper is entering the final stage of the season in stunning form. At the Donbass Arena, he made five key saves to help his team into the semi finals of the Champions League. “I am happy with the way things are going. I think the team is playing better than previous seasons. We are very happy. We came here with a good lead but it’s a tough ground to play at, as we saw, against a Shakhtar team that fought to the end.”

On the two, but quite probably four, clásicos with Real Madrid in the next few weeks, Valdés said “they will be very intense, but also great fun.” And he refuses to concede that the league game will be the easiest of them. “There are no placid games at the Bernabéu. We’ll go out as strong as we can.”

The following is a selection of other comments made by the FC Barcelona players after the game.

Alves
“Now we can relax. We’re in the semi finals, which is what we wanted.”

“There’s a thrilling April ahead. We have fought for this and now football had thrown up an incredible challenge.”

“The most important game is always the next one, which is Saturday’s. We’ll have to play well to win.”

“We know that Saturday will be a difficult game. But it’s also going to be very a very nice game.”

“Mascherano was superb at centre back.”

Villa
“Right now we’re thinking about the league match. And when that’s over, we’ll start thinking about the cup.”

“I think Madrid have a considerable lead [against Tottenham], but anything can happen in football.”

Piqué
“We have taken an important step forward. It is always hard to get to the semi finals.”

“It is always nice to play like we did today. It gives us confidence.”

“The team is feeling great.”

“Mascherano is a fast, intelligent player, he can adapt to any position.”

Barça with Japan

FC Barcelona would like to show our support for the people of Japan and send a special message of hope and support to all our Japanese Club members and supporters in that country.

Abidal receives fans’ support

www.fcbarcelona.cat

The Club and the fans gave an enormous show of solidarity with the Japanese people, as well as sending a positive and caring message to Éric Abidal at the Nou Camp this evening.

The fans showed they were not just interested in the night’s game against Getafe, sending a message of support to the team’s number 22 Eric Abidal who was operated on for a tumour in his liver on Thursday. 

The fans in the ground were able to add their support to the messages Abidal has received all week, as various images of the player were flashed up on the video screen to add to the many banners of support all around the Nou Camp. 

The players came out onto the pitch wearing shirts with the message “T’estimem Abi” –“We love you Abi” and the fans gave a special round of applause on minute 22 to mark the Frenchman’s shirt number. 

Minute’s silence for Japan 
There was also a minute’s silence before the game for the victims of the disaster in Japan. The Club had previously sent a message of support via its players as well as expressing concern for the FCBEscola in Fukuoka and the two Japanese supporters clubs. Japan is also the country with the second highest number of Club members-1470. 

Hidehiro Tsubaki, the Japanese Consul General watched the game from the Directors Box at the invitation of the club and declared to Barca TV: “in the same way that you are confident your players will win, we are confident our people can overcome this disaster.

Team gift win to Abidal (2-1)

Roger Bogunyà

The team gave their stricken team mate Eric Abidal, as well as their fans, a great present with the three points against Getafe that take them one more step towards the title. Alves and Bojan were Barça’s scorers.

With the league taking a break next week, Barça can go into the period happy with tonight’s three points after a comfortable win over Getafe, The team put in a typically assured game despite the enforced absences of Abidal, Maxwell, Puyol and Pedro and a thundering shot from Alves and a second goal from Bojan, who was celebrating 100 La Liga games tonight gave them the points despite a late Manu del Moral consolation for the visitors. 

Spectacular Alves strike 
Guardiola had warned ahead of this game that it was the type of match that could lose a league title and the team came out with that lesson clearly well drilled into them, showing pace, good passing and plenty of skill as they set about breaking down the Getafe defence. The visitors were soon trapped in their own half, though they did show flashes of good skill and control, and a Barça goal looked to be a matter of sooner rather than later. It nearly came with an overhead kick from Messi, but it finally fell to Alves with a stunning first time strike from the edge of the box to open the scoring. 

Goal fails to materialise 
Now Barça began to turn up the heat, but with Xavi and Iniesta well marked in the middle, it was Piqué –with two great raking passes - who created two good chances for Villa. The Spanish striker was off target with his efforts and also earned himself a yellow for diving after he’d previously complained to the ref for not awarding a penalty. Messi and Xavi also sent shots wide of the mark and Valdés had to make a great stop from Casquero with Getafe’s only attempt, to avoid the visitors drawing level. The second wasn’t coming, but the crowd were enjoying the game, especially on 22 minutes when they roared their approval for the team’s number 22 –Abidal. 

Bojan marks his century with a goal 
After all the chances in the first half, the second goal came with the first attack after the break – Bojan’s effort going in off Cata Díaz after the young Catalan striker had been set up by good work from Adriano. Soon after he was replaced by Keita, but he’d made his mark yet again -this time on his 100th league appearance. 

Del Moral gets one back 
Barça had plenty of opportunities to extend their lead, but failed to put them away, allowing the visitors to give them a slight fright as Manu del Moral got between the two centre backs and put away a right wing cross on 87 minutes and in the final seconds Getafe even had the chance to claim a famous, if undeserved draw that would have been harsh indeed on a far superior Barça side.

Always On Real Madrid FC Barcelona 5 Points!

Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are still 5 points behind in the standings in the Liga, the
After the 29th day of Liga.Le FC Barcelona played against Getafe on Saturday and
result of 2-1 gave him 8 points ahead in La Liga against Real Madrid.C is that Alves
opened the scoring with a shot from 25 meters and Krkic doubled the lead shortly before half-
time. Real Madrid held to reduce the gap with FC Barcelona. The match result
was from 2-1 to Atletico Madrid. For Real Madrid's Karim Benzema who opened the
scoring in the 11th minute followed by the 32nd and ?zil Aguero pulled one back for Atletico. The
FC Barcelona and Real Madrid will meet in the Copa del Rey final on April 20
neighbor and the two clubs have qualified for the quarterfinals of the Champions League
2011. Maybe they will meet in the semifinals?

75 goals in the league from open play

Barça is the top scorer in the league by far thanks to the combination game it plays, as 75 of the 79 goals scored have been from open play.

In recent history Barça has always had a lot of possession, but that has to be converted into goals. Guardiola has improved the formula each season and this season the team is getting a better performance than ever from the Barça style triangulations. 

95% of goals from open play 

The proportion of goals from open play is the highest since Guardiola took over the team. Barça has scored 75 of the 79 goals in the league with the type of football that has captured the admiration of everybody in football, and only four goals have been from set pieces. This figure continues to reaffirm the superiority of the Barça game. 

The effectiveness of the club’s style of play continues to grow with Guardiola at the helm, as in his first season his players scored 82 goals from open play and in the previous season, 77. These figures, however, were achieved after playing the entire league, while the 75 current goals have been scored with 10 games remaining. 

Corners are also moves 

Since his arrival, Guardiola has made strategy one of the team’s stronger points. In his first season Barça scored 7 goals from corners in the league and in the second 8 were scored, whilst in the current season we can count only 1. 

This is because this season Barça usually take short corners, to take advantage of their superior combination play. These corners are turned into planned moves. Barça has already scored 3 goals in the league from these plays, and in the stats they count within the 75 goals from open play. 

Penalties and free-kicks 

In previous seasons, the players had scored 10 goals from free kicks in the league, whereas this season they’ve only scored 1, mainly because some of the specialist free-kick takers have left, like Marquez, Henry, and Ibrahimovic and because no goal has been scored from a cross from a free-kick as in previous seasons. Moreover, in the first season 6 goals were scored from the penalty spot, in the second season 3, and this season so far only 2.

Session with a lot missing

The club resumed training on Wednesday to prepare for the game against Getafe. 15 first team players including Alves and Adriano, who worked apart from the group, and three Barça B players took part in the session.

After the draw with Sevilla and having enjoyed two days off, the team led by Josep Guardiola returned to training on Wednesday in order to start preparing for next Saturday’s game at the Camp Nou, against Getafe. 

This Wednesday’s session was notable for missing players. Five players, Alves, Adriano, Maxwell, Pedro and Messi, all finished the match in Seville with injury problems. Also not present were the injured Puyol, and Abidal, who will have surgery this Thursday on the tumour on his liver. 

Adriano and Alves worked separately 
A total of 18 players participated in the training session at the Joan Gamper training ground, from 11a.m., 15 first team players and three from the reserves. However, of the first team players Alves and Adriano, the former with bruised right ankle tendons, and the latter with a muscle strain in his left leg, worked apart from the rest of the group, accompanied by a recovery coach. 

Treatment for Maxwell, Pedro and Messi 
As for the other three players with injury problems, i.e. Maxwell, Messi and Pedro, all 3 received treatment. Maxwell, with discomfort in his right thigh muscle, and Pedro, with a groin strain, are both serious doubts for the Getafe match. Messi, meanwhile, is recovering from a heavy blow to his right knee, and his availability for Saturday's game will depend on how well he recovers. 

16 players available to Guardiola 
13 first team players carried out the normal training session, plus Montoya, Fontàs and Miño from the Barça B team. On a very cloudy day but without rain, Barça began the session with the usual warm-up exercises and drills.