A sick Barcelona

Xavi Hernandez He has before him a gigantic task to re-float Barcelona. A worrying medical situation is added to the football, trust and financial problems that limit reinforcing the squad.. More than a football team, it seems that Xavi arrives at a field hospital, because today the squad has eleven injured. The last three, Nico, Eric and Ansu, fell on Saturday in Vigo. A trend that is not new in this template. Since the team began preseason 20 of the 25 players on the squad have been out at one point or another.

Only four players have always been available to the coach and one of them is Umtiti, who if he has not been injured it is because he has not yet officially reappeared. The others are Riqui Puig, Memphis and Busquets. To this quartet we must add Luuk de Jong, who, although he arrived in the process of recovery after being injured in the European Championship with the Netherlands, at Barça he has not visited the infirmary.

The eleven current injuries are the eight who could not travel to Vigo, plus the aforementioned Ansu, Nico and Eric. Facing the duel against Celta, Sergi could not have Piqué (overload on the soleus of the right leg), Sergi Roberto (elongation in the quadriceps of the right thigh), Pedri (injury in the quadriceps of the left leg), Dembélé (elongation in the semimembranous of the left thigh), Kun Agüero (cardiac arrhythmia), Braithwaite (knee operation), Net (flu) and Dest (low back pain).

But it is that in Barça it rains on wet in this aspect. Nine more players aside from these 11 have been out at some point this season. Mingueza was injured at the Games, Gavi broke his jaw in the preseason, Araújo was injured with Uruguay, Ter Stegen missed the first two league games because he had surgery in the summer, Lenglet had problems with the patellar tendon, Coutinho had the official discharge But he didn’t even play, De Jong had muscle problems, Balde suffered low back pain on the day of his debut and Jordi Alba had muscle problems again.