FCBARCELONA.CAT

12.10.2009 11:19

Eight Barça players through to South Africa 2010

Edgar Fornós

So far, 8 players from the Barça squad have guaranteed their presence in the 2010 World Cup finals. The remaining five players with options of joining their team-mates will have to wait for the results of the last qualifying matches and play-offs.

With Mexico, Brazil, Ivory Coast and Spain all through to the final stage next summer, eight members of the Barça squad will definitely be in South Africa: Márquez, Alves, Touré Yaya and the five Spanish internationals Puyol, Piqué, Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta.

Five more await results

Meanwhile, Messi (Argentina), Abidal and Henry (France), Chigrinskiy (Ukraine) and Ibrahimovic (Sweden) will all have to sweat it out until the final qualifying game and/or the playoffs. In fact, since only Argentina can still qualify directly (beating Uruguay on Wednesday) the others will all have to hope for luck in the playoffs.

Ukraine near play-offs

Ukraine will finish second in Group 6, and therefore get their chance in the play-offs, if they (predictably) beat Andorra in the last game of the qualifying stage. A draw will leave them open to being over taken by third placed Croatia (a point behind), who would need to beat Kazakhstan.

Nothing at stake for France

France (featuring Henry and Abidal) have already clinched second place in their group and will definitely go into the playoffs. So Wednesday’s match against Austria has been reduced to a mere formality for the French squad.