FCBARCELONA.CAT

21.04.2009 13:16

Sevilla a well known opponent

David Puig

The way that the La Liga fixture list is organised this season means that Barça always play the team that Sevilla met the previous matchday. For this reason Sevilla have probably watched by the Barça coaches more than any other rival in the Liga.

We don’t know for sure that the Barça coaching staff have studied the Andalus team more than the rest of the sides in La Liga but one thing seems certain – Guardiola and his assistants must have watched Sevilla many times this season. With one eye on Barça’s next opponent and one eye on Sevilla, there can be little they don’t know about the side coached by Manolo Jiménez.

“We study the opponents more than Sevilla”

Speaking at the press conference after Tuesday’s training session, Josep Guardiola admitted that they have watched many of Sevilla’s matches but he explained that this didn’t mean that they have made a deeper study of Sevilla compared to other teams: “It’s true that we’ve seen many matches of our opponents that play against Sevilla but when we watch the matches we study the team we’re going to play. We’ve taped Sevilla a lot but we haven’t studied them more than other teams”.

Many conclusions from the Valencia v Sevilla match

And so Barça will play Valencia in the Mestalla stadium next Saturday. We can be sure that last Sunday’s Valencia v Sevilla game has been closely studied by the Barça coaches. Sevilla were beaten 3-1 in a match with a lot of talking points: 4 goals, 2 people sent off (head coach Manolo Jiménez and Adriano), 15 cards and a high pressure game.

A tough run for Sevilla

This match was the beginning of a run of matches against the top sides that will continue this Wednesday in the Camp Nou. Earlier in the season, Guardiola and his assistants kept a close eye on these matches and the fact is Sevilla did pretty well. They only lost against Barça in the Sánchez Pizjuán but won the two against Real Madrid (3-4), Villarreal (1-0) and drew against Valencia (0-0).