Although there is still more than a week for the team to return to training a little more than a month and a half after lifting the fifth league in the history of the section, the award-winning new coach Jesus Velasco and his ‘second’ Sergi Altisent have already joined to finish planning a very atypical preseason because of the World Cup in his debut on the Barcelona bench.
In fact, the team is scheduled to start on 23 August with only five personnel plus a Sergio Lozano who is already facing the final stretch of the serious and fortuitous knee injury that occurred on January 15 in the Champions League against Prishtina from Kosovar. Along with the captain will be the Brazilians Marcenio and Matheus, the Russian-Brazilian Leandro Esquerdinha, the goalkeeper Miquel Feixas and the youth squad Bernat Povill.
As for the rest, Dídac Plana, the recently joined Carlos Ortiz and Adolfo will play the World Cup with the Spanish teamAndré Coelho will do it with Portugal and both Dyego and friends Ferrao and Pito will be with Brazil.
Six friendlies
It should be remembered that the great meeting of Lithuania will conclude on October 3 with the dispute of the final, while the league will start for Barça six days later with a difficult visit to Palma Futsal in the third game in two weeks against Antonio Vadillo’s.
With a significant presence of players from the subsidiary led by Xavi Closas and even with mixed training sessions to cover the aforementioned absences, Jesús Velasco has planned a preseason with six friendlies without their seven World Cup players except for an early elimination that nobody wants.
After making history at the helm of Movistar Inter and conquering the French league last season in the ranks of the ACCS with the new Barça player Carlos Ortiz at his command, The Toledo coach will make his debut on the Barça bench in the Ripollet Tournament with duels against Fútbol Emotion Zaragoza on September 4 and against host FS Ripollet the next day. Always at home, the Catalans will visit Mataró on 8-S, Ribera Navarra in Tudela on 15-S and Palma Futsal on 22-S in a league debut rehearsal that will be repeated seven days later at the Palau.
And everything indicates that by then there will not be no World Cup return, a major setback that Velasco will have to solve With what this means when it comes to implementing the new automatisms that should govern the team after five seasons under the command of the new Saudi coach Andreu Plaza.