Barça Regal beat Real Madrid on Wednesday evening thereby forcing a fifth and final game in the Liga Endesa Finals. Lorbek, with 24 points, was the best Barça Regal player on the court. Saturday, at 19:00, the champions of the 2011/12 Liga Endesa will be decided at the Palau Blaugrana
FC Barcelona have come to an agreement with Francesc ‘Tito’ Vilanova. This season's first team assistant manager will be the head coach of FC Barcelona for two seasons, through June 30th, 2014. Barça’s new manager will sign his new contract this Friday, at noon.
Spain is once again the favourite team going into Euro 2012. After breaking an international jinx of 44 years in 2008, they have not looked back since and possess a squad oozing with quality. Of the 23-man squad Vicente del Bosque is taking to the European Championship in Poland and Ukraine six are Catalan players. Their first match of the tournament is against Italy on June 10th.
Barça Regal took the first game in the Final play off series of the Spanish basketball league with an astonishing comeback in the last quarter, crowned by a three pointer from inside his own half by Marcelinho Huertas. Barça Regal were 17 points down in the third and 12 the beginning of the fourth quarter. Navarro (21 points), Lorbek (18) and Mickeal (17) outstanding for the hosts.
A study by the University of Navarra has revealed that Barça is the football club that received most media coverage worldwide for the fourth year on the run, this time ahead of Real Madrid and Chelsea in second and third spots. The study also found that Leo Messi was the player who received most media coverage, also for the fourth successive year, ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Didier Drogba.
The seven FC Barcelona players in Vicente del Bosque’s squad for Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine joined their team mates on Friday morning at the Ciudad del Fútbol de Las Rozas. Carles Puyol and David Villa, who are a regular feature of Spain line-ups, but are recovering from their respective injuries, visited the 23-man squad.
Tito Vilanova will make his debut as Barça head coach in Germany. Barça have been invited to play in the Bundesliga club’s 125th anniversary match. After Hamburg, the next destination for Barça and Tito Vilanova will be a friendly in Morocco on July 28th
FC Barcelona have won their 26th Copa del Rey title after beating Athletic Club, the team with the second most Cup titles in the competition, by 0-3. This was Pep Guardiola’s 12th final on the Barça bench, he leaves the team after winning 11 of those finals and only losing one.
Athletic Bilbao and FC Barcelona will appear in a remake of that unforgettable final of 2009, this time at the Vicente Calderón stadium in Madrid, in what will be Pep Guardiola’s last ever match on Barça’s bench. Without Alves, Puyol, Villa, Abidal or Fontàs, Barça have problems at the back.
The bus, which will accompany the first team when Barça play away from the Camp Nou, is FC Barcelona's new mobile store for official Barça products. The FCBotiga Mobile Bus was unveiled at the Catalan club sports city.
Esperanza Aguirre, one of the main representative from Spanish Nationalism, has asked to postpone the game or playing it in an empty stadium in order to avoid supporters whistling and booing the Spanish National anthem and Prince Felipe, as was the case in 2009. This season’s Spanish Cup Final will be decided in Madrid between FC Barcelona and Athletic Club of Bilbao, a Catalan and a Basque team. Catalan politicians have criticised Aguirre for mixing football and politics. CiU and the PSC have coincided in pointing out that Aguirre is ready to talk about the Cup Final but not about Madrid’s public deficit deviation. Besides, an extreme-right demonstration in Madrid organised on the same day has been authorised.
FC Barcelona and Nike have presented the new first team shirt, with the brand new feature of the famous stripes being blurred. The new Barça second kit for the 2012/13 is orange and yellow, a veritable array of vibrant colours to celebrate the team’s dazzling football.
FC Barcelona player Eric Abidal was today discharged from hospital, although according to a medical bulletin he will still need to return for regular checkups. Abidal had a liver transplant on April 10th. In March 2011, the French defender was diagnosed a liver tumour and he went through a first surgery.
The world’s most popular short-message network has included Catalan as one of its 28 official languages. Twitter has opened a Catalan ‘translation centre’ to adapt its content. In the first 24h, more people had registered voluntarily than the number of those who did it within the 6 months after the Finnish version was released. Twitter’s CEO had already announced at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, which is held every year in Barcelona, that the company would do it, but he did not specify a date. Wikipedia opened its Catalan version 11 years ago and Youtube incorporated Catalan in early 2011. Catalan is is the world’s 8th language with the most blogs, the 13th most used language in Wikipedia, and the 14th search language in Google.
The FC Barcelona player underwent surgery on Wednesday afternoon to correct his fractured collarbone. Alves was injured the same morning during Barça first team’s training session.