As a Sevilla fan at that club’s The Offside page noted after they gave our kids and b-teamers a 3-1 kiss at their house, “Remember when we pissed them off last season? 4-0?”

Yes, we do. And it was deja vu all over again, in a masterclass of decisive, dominant football, with a twist: Usually, it’s our opponent who catches us looking forward to a crucial mid-week European encounter. This time, it was us catching someone in a position of disadvantage. Because make no mistake, Sevilla had to balance the club’s Champions League needs past and upcoming, with what will almost certainly be the club’s most realistic chance to win silver.

So they rolled out with a spate of tactical naivete that was sure to fail, and so it did, because they ran into a buzzsaw, and we got, as Parliament-Funkadelic would say, not just knee deep, but hip-deep in that ass.
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vicsoc’s in the house with the magic.

Reminder: Be nice! This is our first LiveBlog of the season, so let’s make it a memorable one. Thanks.

Woo! It’s preview time for the Sevilla match and Barcelona is hoping to bring home the 8th championship of the Pep Guardiola era and start the season off right after an offseason of ups (hey, 8 World Cup champions) and downs (Zlatan is staying, for the last time, if you ask again, the banhammer is coming out). But out boys have got some work to do after taking a 3-1 beating at Sevilla last weekend in a game that featured very little good play, although that’s to be expected when none of your players have practiced together in 3 months and most of them have spent that time on a beach. But enough with the excuses here, Barcelona lost and the only way to make it better is to win at least 2-0 tomorrow. Continue Reading

The team is back to training regularly and Piqué is talking up the quality of the team, deft jabs at RM being thrown in for the hell of it. It feels like April in that way. The Supercopa second leg looms and a recent interview with Chygrynskiy left it clear that Guardiola wanted him and Rosell discarded him for momentary financial reasons that scored momentary brownie points with some fans. Feels like July in that way. Ibra is going to Milan, but also isn’t going anywhere. Feels like any given day in that way. Hum-drum, piddly-pum. But it’s getting on now towards the end of August, towards the first match of La Liga proper and there’s little left to wonder about other than tactical approaches and lineups. Feels good in that way.

There are 5 B-teamers continuing to practice with the first team Thiago, JDS, Andreu Fontàs, Víctor Vázquez, and Oier Olázabal and 3 others all got to hang around while their fellow B-boys prepared for a friendly against Sabadell tonight (takes place at 2pm EST, or basically an hour after this post goes up; how’s that for warning?). There’s a closed-door training session in which the 22 first teamers and 5 B-teamers are going to learn about how we’re so going to beat the snot out of Sevilla on Saturday and win us a freakin’ Supercopa. They’ll be told to deixerem them some pels (again–I’m assuming it all grew back since May) and, in the immortal words of Kevin (or perhaps Kxevin takes responsibility here), get knee deep in that ass.

And with that I must leave you all to ponder the fortunes and fates of the good ship Barça as I finish packing my house for a move all the way to other side of…well not even the other side of town. Like 15 blocks away. Your second leg preview is coming to via Luke “Never Heard That One Before…” Skywalker. Settle down, folks, I’ll be returning on Monday with extra doses of chocolate-eating fun.

About seven hundred years ago, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ did not refer to a Pat’n’Vanna megasquirt of game-show CheezWhiz (am I the only one here old enough to remember when you had to buy the ceramic dog?), but an oversized accessory for the hippest gal in the galaxy. Her name was Fortuna, and she dangled men from her wrist like a giant charm bracelet, turning them round to glint in the sun or to tumble into shade. When you’re down, there’s nowhere to go but up, and if you’re up, well, don’t look down. Who’s in, who’s out, who’s hot, who’s not … it’s the September Issue. Let’s see who’s taken a ride on Fortuna’s wild Wheel this summer.

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Call me biased, but I don’t think a practice goes by without many moments such as this. Players don’t have to like each other, don’t have to enjoy laughing together and working together, but it sure helps. I suspect part of the reason our club goes like a rocket is that the players never seem to forget that despite all the pressure, and all the millions and millions of dollars, this is still just a game.
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It’s enough to make you scream, isn’t it? When Sevilla put the wood to us on Saturday in their house, many were talking as if we’d rolled out a lineup of total scrubs against their first-choice unit, which isn’t entirely true.

But, at issue here is that we had 4 canteranos: keeper Mino, center back Sergi Gomez, midfielder Dos Santos and defensive mid Oriol Romeu, in positions that are key to the success of our club. It was a grand experiment that, for about 62 minutes, was working to perfection.

And now comes the debate: Was Guardiola right to trust so much to the kids, how bright is our future, and how in the hell do you integrate future stars into a side, so that the Catalan press doesn’t go nuts as we try to buy back another farm product.
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Lordy, what the hell happened? First of all, I’d like to give a big, giant thank-you to Comcast, who have added TVE to their lineup, which enabled me to watch this match in full, big-screen, DVRed glory.

I’m only sorry that things weren’t better. Man, did they start out well, but here is the bottom line: Depth is going to be a problem this season, but we all knew that. When ALL of your starting XI are, for one reason or another, called away from the team with a match that you’d like to win coming up, it’s no surprise that when facing a fit, rested opponent’s first-choice side, things aren’t going to go all that well.

So what happened?
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Well, here we are, back in competition. And I’ve got to pack up my house to move, so no liveblog.

Barça: Miño, Alves, Sergi Gómez, Milito, Abidal, Jonathan dos Santos, Oriol Romeu, Keita, Maxwell, Ibrahimovic, Bojan.
Sevilla: Palop, Dabo, Fazio, Escudé, Konko, Perotti, Romaric, Zokora, Navas, Renato, Luis Fabiano.

Visca el Barça!

Oh me oh my, gotta shake off the cobwebs and figure out how I do a preview again. This is going to be rough, not only because I just flew in from Mexico (and boy are my arms tired), but I’ve only been given a few weeks off since I won the World Cup in a blaze of glory. Okay, yeah I didn’t do anything–I didn’t even go to Mexico–but I did watch the World Cup from the comfort of my home and I did think the summer was a bit too short.

There were the obligatory transfer rumors that I didn’t really cover (though I came up with some Banquillo names just in case) and the preseason matches that got my blood pumping and my lady shaking her head far too early in the season. I can’t help it if I scream goal at 8 in the morning while watching the blaugranitos imitating the blaugranotes. And then, of course, there’re the new arrivals to swoon over even as I categorically reject newer arrivals: Villa is going to be wonderful, but let’s bet on the cantera. No to Mascherano, Özil, and Cesc! It’s easy to just accept what’s already been done and just as easy to posture as a cantera-lover for future arrivals. You can always claim you weren’t in favor of so-and-so, look how they failed, I told you so. Or “I’ve grown to love such-and-such, though, he’s really accepted the colors.”

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