Barcelona’s best player was not at their final training session at San Joan Despi before facing Osasuna on Thursday night. Instead, as his teammates took to the practice field on Wednesday morning, Raphinha, scorer of 27 goals and provider of 20 assists this season, was still somewhere over the Atlantic.
The same was true of the defender Ronald Araújo, with the Barcelona coach, Hansi Flick, confirming that neither of them will play as La Liga restarts – 44 hours after Brazil kicked off against Argentina in a World Cup qualifier more than 10,000 miles away.
The Osasuna midfielder Enzo Boyomo may play, at least that was the hope Barcelona’s opponents hold on to, but with a day to go his manager did not know where exactly he was either, let alone what shape he was in. “We have to see if he makes it first,” Vicente Moreno said. The Cameroon international had embarked on a journey from Yaoundé to Istanbul to Madrid to Barcelona.
Araújo’s plan had initially been to travel from La Paz, where Uruguay took on Bolivia, and pick up Raphinha and other Brazilian and Argentinian La Liga players in Buenos Aires, stopping in Madrid en route to Barcelona. They were not due to arrive in Catalonia until Wednesday evening.
“They are not going to play,” Flick said. “The flight is long, it’s not the ideal situation. They have to train, recover, rest. We will see about Sunday [when Barcelona play again].”
Brazil-Argentina had kicked off at 1am Wednesday Spain time; Barcelona-Osasuna begins at 9pm on Thursday. “If we could have chosen another date, we would have done,” Moreno said speaking for both clubs. By then, though, nothing could be done.
Barcelona and Osasuna had originally been scheduled to face each other a fortnight ago, but the game was postponed at the last minute after the death of Barcelona’s club doctor Carles Minarro in the team hotel in the hours before the game. Rescheduling was not easy: Barcelona are in the Copa del Rey semi-final and the Champions League quarter-finals. Elimination from either competition would open options but, if not, the only date available was three days before the final game of the league season.
Barcelona train before their rescheduled match with Osasuna. Photograph: Javier Borrego/AFP7/Shutterstock
When 27 March was first proposed the clubs objected. According to the fixture list, that would mean Osasuna playing Barcelona on Thursday and Athletic Bilbao on Friday. It would also mean the teams missing some internationals and playing others that had not had a rest between the international break and club fixtures restarting.
Robert Lewandowski trained on Wednesday for the first time after representing Poland. Spanish, Dutch and French players had played extra time in their midweek internationals. Flick suggested that going straight to penalties was “something we could think about”.
The Spanish federation unilaterally decided the game would go ahead on Thursday, with Osasuna’s game against Athletic moved back two days. Barcelona do not now have the stipulated 72 hours between their next two league games – a week after Carlo Ancelotti had threatened that if that happened to Real Madrid again they would refuse to turn up.
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On Wednesday, Flick said: “We are Barça, not Real. I am proud of that.” Asked if La Liga was different, he gave a one word answer: “Complicated.”
Flick said: “I am not happy with this situation. You see how other leagues do it and it is different. It is not about Barcelona, it is about protecting players. But I can’t change anything. We are going to play.
“I don’t want to talk about it much; we have to accept it. They said you have to play and so we play. Maybe Uefa and Fifa need to say its necessary for [players to have] two or three days rest after the international break. I don’t want to tell you what my reaction was when I found out.
“We had decided that the players would have two days rest after the international break and we have had to change that. It’s not the best situation but they’re very professional and they are in good shape. The team is fantastic, what I saw today [in training] is a very good situation.
“We are confident and we have to fight, and winning tomorrow would be the best reaction we can have. I had a meeting with the rest of my staff, the physios, the fitness coaches about what we can do and they said: ‘You know, coach? The players are good, they’re fit, they can play every three days.’”
