Friday, May 18th, 2012
Barcelona will seal qualification to the last-16 of the Champions League with a victory over Czech champions Plzeň on Tuesday night.
The European champions cruised to a 2-0 win over their opponents two weeks ago, with only some uncharacteristic profligate finishing preventing a much bigger winning margin.
The match will be Pep Guardiola’s 200th in charge of Barcelona and he is expected to rotate his side like he has in recent games. Andrés Iniesta, Cesc Fábregas and Xavi were all rested from Saturday’s 5-0 win over Mallorca and will probably return to the starting line-up tomorrow.
Carles Puyol and Gerard Piqué also came on as substitutes in the demolition of the islanders and could be given some much needed match practice in defence.
Plzeň had a morale boosting 5-0 win over Hradec Králové at the weekend, only their third win in their last seven games, and manager Pavel Vrba wants his side to be more aggressive than during their defeat in Catalonia.
“We must play aggressively, although we cannot play open football against them. I would be happy if we reproduced some of the good moments from our recent league matches. We want to please a full house in Prague. It will be a very special night for all of us to host such a great team
. I’ve showed the players our game in Barcelona – the things we did well, and the things we could have done better.
“We want to get at least a point. We have a good home record. We want to win at home, although we are aware that in this case it will be extremely hard. However, we want to show more than we did in Barcelona where we did not manage a single attempt on goal.”
Roman Pavlík should return in goal for the Czechs in place of the injured Marek Čech.
FACT: Barcelona have kept eight successive clean sheets and have not been breached in 787 minutes, stretching back to Pablo Hernández’s goal in the 2-2 draw with Valencia on 21 September
Tags: Barcelona, Champions League, Viktoria Plzen
