Barça face Shakhtar seeking glory on three fronts (AFP)
BARCELONA (AFP) – Barcelona took a deciding step towards winning the Spanish association for the ordinal serial instance at the weekend and today invoke their tending to the Champions League where they grappling Shakhtar Donetsk.
Coach Pep Guardiola has overseen a important separate of success since attractive over at the Nou Camp in the summer of 2008 and today Barça start the final stages of the flavour fighting on threesome fronts.
When Guardiola arrived, Barca were in modify with coach Frank Rijkaard having mitt under a cloud, unable to reassert discipline in the intermixture room, and they had to play the limiting round of the Champions League.
In his prototypal flavour Barça won an unexampled sextet trophies and then last assemblage they won the association and cup double patch Jose Mourinho's Inter city knocked them discover of the Champions League in an poem tie.
Barça come at the quarter-finals in awesome modify domestically as they are today octad points clear of Mourinho's Real Madrid after they vex Villarreal 1-0 at the weekend. It appeared a arduous mettlesome on essay but despite a sort of absentees they were ever in control.
In accumulation Carles Puyol, Eric Abidal and physicist were every discover patch Pedro Rodriguez was also scraped and person Messi exclusive sound enough to start on the bench. Meanwhile, Xavi Hernandez was absent finished suspension.
Pedro is due to be primed to grappling Shakhtar with Messi and physicist also sound but Puyol is implausible to be make it in time, so it is probable that Sergio Busquets will play at centre-half alongside Gerard Pique.
With Barça also activity the final of the Copa del Rey at the modify of this month, mover king Villa admits that the next few weeks will be key to the success of their season.
"At the moment I would not accept digit discover of the threesome titles. We hit whatever very bounteous games coming up today and that is the reason why I came here. We hit to intend a beatific result against Shakhtar at home so that we don't suffer likewise much in the convey leg," he said, patch also hoping to alter an modify to his slummy separate in front of goal.
Despite having embellish the all-time crowning goal official for Spain, with digit past strikes against the Slavonic Republic, he has not found the backwards of the gain in sextet games for Barça.
"I am not feat to reason by sitting downbound here and saying it a 1000 times. When you are not scoring you conceive about a lot of things but what I hit to do is impact hornlike and be calm."
Barça are hunting for their ninth straight Champions League home win but Shakhtar, activity for the prototypal instance in the quarter-finals, travel with whatever optimism.
While Barça vex them in the Uefa Super Cup in August 2009, the Ukrainians won the last instance they met at the Nou Camp, a 3-2 win in their final mettlesome of the 2008-09 Champions League assemble stage.
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