Barça returns to work with one eye on a complicated winter market

On November 8 at El Sadar, a hard field to fight, Barcelona put the point and part of the season with a win against Osasuna (1-2) that allows him to spend the Christmas holidays and the World Cup in Qatar being the leader of La Liga with 37 points, two more than Real Madrid.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
05 December 2022 Monday 05:35
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Barça returns to work with one eye on a complicated winter market

On November 8 at El Sadar, a hard field to fight, Barcelona put the point and part of the season with a win against Osasuna (1-2) that allows him to spend the Christmas holidays and the World Cup in Qatar being the leader of La Liga with 37 points, two more than Real Madrid. The next day he said goodbye to Gerard Piqué in the last training session before the World Cup event and today, 25 days later, Xavi met his pupils again in a week in which meetings with the sports management will also begin to face the market of winter. They are looking for a central defender to cover the departure of Gerard Piqué – they like the Athletic Club defender, Íñigo Martínez, who ends his contract in the summer and if he does not leave now, he will leave Bilbao without leaving a single penny in the box. Also to a right-back who adds competitiveness to the performance of Sergi Roberto and Héctor Bellerín. [See the results of the World Cup in Qatar].

They will try with the shadow of financial fair play and the League lurking. "It's complicated," say club sources. Some output is also expected to continue releasing the wage bill. As announced by the Calciomercato portal, Roma has set its sights on Héctor Bellerín after Mourinho's strong disagreement with Rick Karsdorp. However, they would like to incorporate him on loan so that the Barça club would only save the remaining Bellerín token, an amount that would not help much to free up the salary mass with which to make new incorporations since his salary is one of the lowest in the template.

Today's training session scheduled for 11:00 a.m. was a family event since Barcelona has 17 internationals called up by eight different teams for Qatar-2022. It treats of the historical record of Barcelona present in the Glass of the World. The top was in Russia-2018 with 14 summoned ahead of the 13 in France-98, South Africa-2010 and Brazil-2014.

Meanwhile international Xavi will only have four players from the first team these first days: Héctor Bellerín, Marcos Alonso, Sergi Roberto, who has already recovered from a dislocated left shoulder, and Iñaki Peña. Added to them are the injured Kessié, with a hamstring tear, and Pablo Torre, who has ankle problems that have prevented him from playing the last two games with Rafa Márquez's subsidiary. Both advance in their respective recoveries at a good pace.

Also in the injured section is Ronald Araújo, who returned from the World Cup without having played a minute with Uruguay. He has a month to recover. The other three international players who are no longer in the World Cup, due to the elimination of their teams: Andreas Christensen (Denmark), Marc André Ter Stegen (Germany) and Robert Lewandowski (Poland), have permission until the week of December 12.