Swine Flu Arrives at Barcelona

Barcelona's sports newspaper Sport.es reports two Barça players have been diagnosed with swine flu: Toure Yayá and Eric Abidal. Touré played with his team Cote D'Ivore in Africa this week.

As these players have been training for some days with the rest of the team, there's some chance it could spread to other players.

Barça plays Bilbao tomorrow and apart from these two players won't count with Ibrahimovic with a muscular injury.

Full Time Highlights: Barcelona 5 - Cultural Leonesa 0 (Copa del Rey)

Nice and easy five goal win (a handful of goals that is). Even Messi and Xavi got to score as they played part of the 2nd Half. Bojan scored twice and that's a very good sign. Let's hope he has the chance to prove himself at La Liga next. Enjoy the goals.

Bojan 52' (1-0)

Bojan 54' (2-0)

Pedro 63' (3-0)

Messi 65' (4-0)

Xavi 75' (5-0)

On other news, Real Madrid won only 1-0 against Alcorcon and is out of Copa del Rey competition. Tough luck, madridistas...

Barcelona - Cultural Leonesa: Watch Online. UPDATED

Stay tuned for updates on where to watch today's match online (at 22:00 Spanish time GMT+1) , meanwhile check this guide to online broadcast sites I wrote on a recent post.

UPDATE! Here are the links:

P2P	Nombre	Idioma	Tipo	Kbps	Play
NO	Aljazeera Sport +2	en	Ustream	415	Play
P2P	International Soccer	ro	SopCast	288	Play
NO	Extralive	pt	Freedocast	285	Play
NO	snsacionss	es	Justin		Play
NO	vipcanal	ar	Justin		Play
NO	nadorlivehd	ar	Justin		Play
NO	geo2chanels	es	Justin		Play
NO	el0dia	es	Justin		Play
NO	psn260	es	Justin		Play
NO	sakaryali	tr	Freedocast		Play

Prematch: Barcelona - Cultural Leonesa (Copa del Rey)

Tonight we play Cultural again in the second match of the Copa del Rey. The two goals advantage will make Pep put a similar lineup to the previous math against Cultural with none or few main players on the field. This may be the lineup:

Barcelona: Pinto; Alves, Fontàs, Márquez, Maxwell; Sergio Busquets, Iniesta, Jonathan dos Santos; Pedro, Jeffren y Bojan

Cultural: Calzado; Cerveró, Roberto Carlos, Pereira, Salva; Segovia, Chema Mato; Ferrán, Yahvé, Alberto Suárez y Jito

The player to watch is Jito, the top scorer of all the spanish soccer leagues. Also, we'll have the chance to see young Barça promises as Jonathan, Jeffren or Pedro (who plays with the first team and scored two goals on La Copa and two more against Mallorca last weekend in La Liga). Bojan has another opportunity to prove himself as he Pep doesn't put him much on La Liga.

Fontàs, Benítez, Jonathan Soriano, Jonathan Dos Santos y Gai Assulin
 from the FC Barcelona Second Team

Match is played at 22:00 Spanish Time (that is GMT+1). Stay tuned for info on where to watch online.

Let's have a mini quote roundup:

We're not yet on the next round. This is the most dangerous round in Copa del Rey, we've been defeated several times on this same situation. Sport sometimes brings undesired susprises

Pep Guardiola

Tonight there'll be few people at the stadium, but anyone who comes we'll thank him. There'll be very good players on the filed tonight

Pep Guardiola

Of course Madrid can pass to next round, they've spent 260 millions on reinforcement, it's possible enough!!

Pep Guardiola

I've always dreamt of playing at the Camp Nou and in the end the dream is coming true

Jito, Cultural's top scorer

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is magic

He didn't score yesterday, but he's so much more than a scorer. See for yourself in this cool video. Enjoy.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is Magic (best football player)

Full Time Highlights: Barcelona 4 - Mallorca 2 (La Liga)

Barça won without the offensive heavyweights (except Ibra) and remains on top of La Liga. It's a pity Madrid won over Atletico. We are on top but it would have been a sweeter victory if we had a 4 point advantage instead of the 1 point we now keep. Event better having to visit Bernabeu when La Liga continues after the international matches next week.

Have a look at the goals. Pedro scored twice, Henry scored his first of the league and the last one was a penalty kick by Messi, who entered on the 2nd half.

F.C Barcelona Vs Mallorca 4-2 All Goals LIGA BBVA

Related links:
- Barcelona 4-2 Real Mallorca: Pedro Brace Steers Blaugrana To Win (Goal.com)
- Barcelona 4-2 Mallorca (ESPNSTAR)

Full Time Highlights: Rubin Kazan 0 - Barcelona 0

We went, we saw, we draw... This should have been the match to bring us to the next round, but it wasn't. We missed our (few) chances so, now, we are in third position and have a difficult match at Kiev and we play Inter in Barcelona. Things have complicated, but we should be optimistic, nevertheless. Take a look at how the match went.

(when you click play, go back to this page and press it again on the green arrow, sorry for the inconvenience)

Rubin Kazan 0 - Barcelona 0

Rubin Kazan - Barcelona : Watch online (UPDATED)

UPDATE:

P2P	79509	ru	SopCast	1362	Play
NO	Kanal 5 Plus	mk	Web (Flash)	800	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	Tvants	724	Play
P2P	Europa 1 livesport1	ro	SopCast	705	Play
P2P	NTV Russia	ru	Tvuplayer	641	Play
P2P	Kooora tounsia	ar	SopCast	547	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	Tvants	534	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	SopCast	520	Play
P2P	Guangdong S.	zh	Tvants	464	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	UUSEE	450	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	Tvants	447	Play
P2P	FS TV	en	SopCast	441	Play
P2P	ESPN China	zh	Tvants	375	Play
P2P	ESPN China	zh	StreamTorrent	374	Play
P2P	Ten Sports	en	Tvuplayer	360	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	Tvants	351	Play
P2P	Caifu Sports SIPTV		PCastv	350	Play
P2P	Guangdong S.	zh	UUSEE	350	Play
P2P	FootBall 2 (Fox Sports)	es	Tvuplayer	338	Play
P2P	CCTV-5	zh	Tvuplayer	330	Play
P2P	soccer (Fox Soccer Ch.)	en	Tvuplayer	298	Play
P2P	simply the best	nl	SopCast	288	Play
NO	streamingsport	it	Freedocast	200	Play
P2P	kooora tounsia2	ar	SopCast	149	Play
P2P	Danish Delight 2	dk	Tvuplayer		Play
P2P	Roni10 and more		Veetle		Play
P2P	Fox Soccer Live 24/7	ro	Vexcast		Play

Stay tuned for updates on where to watch today's match online, meanwhile check this guide to online broadcast sites  I wrote on a recent post.

Our lineup:

Valdés, Abidal, Puyol, Piqué, Alves (he'll be back!), Touré Yaya, Keita, Xavi, Messi, Ibra, Iniesta

Match is played at 18:30 spanish hour (that's GMT+1)

Prematch: Rubin Kazan - Barcelona (Champions League)

Wednesday is the day we get some vengeance!! Wait, it sounds a bit rude... Let's see, today Kazan, tomorrow Europe!! Mmm, not getting there quite yet. So, we win  Kazan, we get ourselves half the ticket to next Champions League round. Ok, now?

This match is more important than it seems, as the next match would be against Dinamo Kiev in what may be worse weather conditions. It's the time to assure Barça's classifies.

These are the ones that go to Kazan:

Valdés, Pinto, Puyol, Abidal, Maxwell, Márquez, Piqué, Touré Yaya, Sergio Busquets, Keita, Xavi, Iniesta, Henry, Messi, Pedro, Jeffren, Ibrahimovic y Bojan.

Also, Alves may be back, he has recovered from his muscular injury and is travelling with the team just in case. His side of the team is hurting without him, Osasuna's goal came from that side and Marquez's shape isn't helping either.

Henry and Touré are also going with the team and may play as both are also recovered and ready to play.

Tomorrow we'll post the usual lineup guess. (even Kazan's)

There's a lot of talk in the press about the weather in Kazan. It's expected that at the playing time, 20:30 local time (2 hours less in Barcelona) there could be from 0 ºC to -6 ºC with some wind wich could worsen the overall cold feeling. We have not to worry about the playing field, as Russian stadiums are prepared with under earth heating.

Weather forecast for this week at Kazan (at least it won't snow tomorrow!!)

More info:

- Barcelona looking to get back on track in Russia (ESPN Soccernet)
- Champions League Preview - Rubin Kazan vs Barcelona (World Soccer News)
- Dani Alves makes early return as Barça travel to Russia (ESPN Soccernet)

Dreamcheers, the Barça Cheerleaders

The Dream Cheers are the Barça Cheerleaders, considered one of the best in Europe. Funny, pretty and they really can dance!

They've been looking for new members for their team and put a video asking for new members. The casting was on the 31st of October and more than one hundred girls answered the call. The casting asked them to show their best choreography and dance in order to be selected by the jury. It will be a tough call as only thirty can arrive to the final selection. We hope can see more of them soon. Let's enjoy the Dreamcheers!

The Dreamcheers Casting Call

You can see then every home basketball match of Regal Barça, the basketball team of FC Barcelona. People really look like having fun!

Before we end, let's hear a salute from some of the girls.

Awaiting their call, smiling



We salute you, culés!


S-P-E-C-T-A-C-U-L-A-R


Ivette flying


She's Sara, in case you wondered


Sara, again

Go visit them at Dreamcheers.com

(all pictures by Victor Salgado)