Athletic Bilbao vs Barcelona

Primera, Spain

Match date: Saturday, Nov 21, 2009

Stadium: Estadio San Mamés

Two weeks ago Bilbao reached their fifth Primera win, after beating Santander away and closed the gap behind the top-placed teams. Barcelona managed to keep the one point ahead of their biggest rivals, after easily handling Mallorca 4:2. In the last five league games, Bilbao managed to take only one point, while they lost the first leg in Cup quarterfinals to Rayo Vallecano 2:0. Coach Joaquin Caparros will have problems with forming the line-up, having in mind that he can’t count on suspended Ustariz and Gurpegui and on the youngest scorer in the history of the club Iker Muniain. Bilbao have gone three whole years without winning Barcelona at home, while the Catalans triumphed in eight of last nine games against the Basque side, which is why seems tempting. Fernando Llorente is by far Athletic’s best scorer in the last few seasons, while this season he scored two goals in the league so far and scored even three in Europa League. This month the club extended the contract with Llorente till 2013. kept a great scorer in the team. He is completely recovered from injury, so the visiting defense will have to watch out for him and .League leaders easily handled Mallorca at Camp Nou two weeks ago and we must mention that young Pedro opened the score and he is the true revelation in Catalan squad this season. After that Pedro scored in the Cup too against Ciltural, while Krkic, Xavi and Messi also contributed to Barca’s convincing win. Coach Guardiola can’t count on Eric Abidal for the next three weeks, as the Frenchman got injured playing for the national squad. Good news for coach Guardiola before this duel is the return of Dani Alves, while Ibrahimovic will probably be back too. Chygrynskyi will return to the back line, after recovering from injury and he will additionally boost Catalan’s defense. Having in mind that Barca will spend most of the game in front of the opposite net we think that seems tempting.Messi and Ibrahimovic seem unstoppable and in the last nine games these two have scored seven goals each. We expect the dream tandem to continue the great run, which is why seems tempting.Bilbao handled their crisis and they are slowly moving up in the league, as well as in Evropa League, but this weekend they haven’t got much to hope for against inspired Barca that have gone last five duels at San Mames unbeaten, having won four of them. Another reason why we believe Barca will win is that next weekend they will play in El Clasico with Real, which is why they will go out of their way to keep the lead over the royal club Highlights and results will be available soon..