Win or win for Barça

A final. That is what Barcelona has this Tuesday in Ukraine against Dinamo Kiev. The team led by Sergi Barjuan has reached the fourth day of the Champions League with their homework left undone and they need three points to allow them to slam the results crisis and get closer to the round of 16. A victory would allow the Catalans to arrive at the meeting against Benfica depending on themselves to pass the round, while a defeat would leave them with a foot and a half out of the competition.

«The only way to make ourselves respected is by winning. You have to hit the table. A victory would bring joy and transform the attitude of the culé into positivism, ”Sergi said at the press conference prior to his second game as interim on the Barça bench. The Catalan coach knows the importance of the crash for qualifying for the next round, but he also knows that it is a key moment to change the inertia of a team installed in the depression after the consecutive punctures against Real Madrid, Rayo Vallecano and Alavés .

Sergi will live a different game. The clash against Dinamo will be his first meeting as a coach in the Champions League and that makes him “special”. The former Barça player arrives at the appointment with doubts about the team’s game but with the good news of recovering several players who were absent in the league commitment against Alavés. Ansu Fati, Ousmane Dembélé, Frenkie de Jong and Ronald Araujo have stopped the physical problems they were dragging at a stroke and are available to the Catalan coach if he deems it appropriate.

Those who will not be Gerard Piqué, due to an elongation in the soleus of his right leg, and Sergio Agüero. The Argentine must be out for at least three months, during which “the effectiveness of the treatment will be evaluated to determine his recovery process,” as Barcelona announced on Monday after the arrhythmia suffered by Kun against Alavés.

Lenglet will surely occupy the place of Piqué with Eric García, Frenkie de Jong will return to the core and Ansu Fati would return to the eleven in attack accompanying Memphis Depay and Sergiño Dest. Dembélé, still unpublished this season, will have a progressive addition to the team, similar to that of Ansu Fati, since from the club he does not want to take risks with a player who already has a long history of injuries.

Colista

Despite being measured at the bottom of the group, the duel against Dinamo does not invite relaxation at Can Barça. In the first leg, the Catalans were imposed by the minimum at the Camp Nou in a match full of doubts and now they face a team that arrives on the rise after expanding their dominance in the Ukrainian league. This weekend he beat Mariupol 2-3 and already has 35 points out of 39 possible. Lucescu’s team also has an opportunity before them to get fully into the fight to be in the second round if they achieve the three points against Barcelona.

Lucescu arrives at the appointment with skyrocketing morale after dominance in his country but he does so, yes, with several important casualties and almost all of them located on the attack front. Artem Besedin, Vladyslav Kulach, Ibrahim Kargbo and Vladyslav Supryaga, all forwards, missed the weekend’s duel against Mariupol and will not make it to the Champions League on time. Neither will defender Denis Popov be there after a torn cruciate ligament. With these absences, it is likely that the veteran Romanian coach opts for a 4-5-1 to fill the center of the field and thus put Sergi in difficulties when it comes to circulating the ball.