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Match day at last! FC Barcelona are in the United States for their summer tour, and just 48 hours after touching down in Florida, they are straight into action with the first game of the preseason.
The venue is the 60,219 capacity Camping World Stadium in Orlando and the opposition are the defending Premiership champions Manchester City, also winners of the Champions League a couple of seasons ago, managed of course by an old friend in Pep Guardiola.
Kick-off is at 7pm local time on Tuesday (1am on Wednesday morning CEST) for what promises to a fabulous encounter, even though both sides will be missing some of the bigger names who reached the latter stages of Euro 24 and the Copa America. And for Barça, it’s an especially important occasion, because this will be the very first game under brand new manager Hansi Flick.
Barça go into this game without any of the members of the Euro 24 winning Spanish squad, or the trio of Pau Cubarsí, Fermín López and Eric Garcia who are away at the Paris Olympics, as well as Jules Kounde, who reached the Euro semi-finals with France. Germans Ter Stegen and Ilkay Gündogan, as well as Raphinha of Brazil, have reported to the team camp for duty, but it is probably too early to expect them to feature in this game.
One curiosity about this game is it brings together the only two coaches to have led a team to the incredible record of all six major trophies in the same year. Guardiola did it with Barça and Flick with Bayern.
And while this is the first game of the preseason for the Catalans, for Man City it is already their third. They lost 4-3 to Celtic in North Carolina, and then 3-2 to AC Milan in New York, so will be especially keen to get their first win under their belt. Although many of their biggest names are still missing, neither of Erling Haaland or Jack Grealish played at the Euros, and they’re both set to play here.
