Barça, to sentence the eliminatory one in the Camp Nou

Sentencing the tie. That is the objective that Barcelona has set for this Thursday at the Camp Nou against Galatasaray. The team led by Xavi Hernández reaches the round of 16 of the Europa League in its best moment of the season after accumulating four consecutive wins and also faces a rival in low hours. Galatasaray is no longer that team that amazed at the beginning of the century and is currently twelfth in the Turkish league. It is the ideal scenario to extend the good streak culé and put the pass to the next round on track.

«Galatasaray is a compact team, with interesting tactical issues, but we can make them suffer if we take the ball away from them. We need to get a great result, because if we don’t, it will cost us in Turkey”, stated Xavi in ​​the press conference prior to the match. The Catalan coach knows the importance of leaving the tie on track in the first leg before traveling to the Nef Stadium, where a trap can be experienced if a good advantage is not achieved in Thursday’s clash.

Barça will arrive at the meeting at the best moment of the course. Xavi’s pupils have managed in recent days to achieve the regularity that they had lacked throughout the season and the numbers attest to this. Four consecutive wins and fourteen goals in that span of games. Numbers that speak of a dynamic that Can Barça want to maintain at all costs. “We are in a good dynamic and we cannot get out of it. We have to go on the attack, create chances and continue with our game model, “said the Egarense coach.

To maintain this dynamic, Xavi will be able to count on practically all the players who defeated Elche last weekend, with the exception of Dani Alves, who was absent as he was not registered in the competition. The Brazilian winger joins the injury losses of Balde, Umtiti, Sergi Roberto, Lenglet and Ansu Fati, a player who is already “in the final part of his injury.” All these absences will condition an eleven in which there will be rotations to cushion the impact of the number of games and in which Xavi will use Ferran Torres and Adama Traoré in the attacking trident, both on the bench in the last league match at the Martínez Valero.

There will be no return of Arda Turan

It will be a game in which Barça will face a coach who knows the house. Doménec Torrent, Galtasaray coach, went through the ranks of the culé team first in the subsidiary and then as second in command of Pep Guardiola, a coach with whom he also lived at Bayern Munich and Manchester City. That background was what helped him make the leap to the front row and, after passing through New York City and Flamengo, sign with Galatasaray. At the moment his team is twelfth in the Turkish Super League but it is in Europe where they have left their best sensations so far this season. The ‘Galata’ passed in the group stage as first classified, leaving behind Lazio, Olympique de Marseille and Lokomotiv Moscow.

Galatasaray is not in a good moment but they travel to the Camp Nou, yes, with just two casualties. Doménec Torrent will be without Fatih Ozturk due to injury or Arda Turan, separated from the team. The one that one day was a star of Atlético de Madrid and brand new signing culé continues with the particular descent of him to hell. His club assures that the situation he is going through responds to strictly technical reasons, but in Turkey there is speculation that his good relationship with Fatih Terim, the coach dismissed by the entity, could be the trigger that has led him not to play a single minute since the beginning February.