FCBARCELONA.CAT

01.08.2008 18:03

Eto’o back to training

David Saura (special correspondent)

Samuel Eto'o trained as normal on Friday having taken a few days rest after bashing his head on Tuesday.

Pep Guardiola has Samuel Eto'o back. The Cameroonian striker trained with the team as usual in today’s training session one of the fields at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Barça centre forward was able to participate in all of the exercises as if nothing had happened, in his first appearance on a soccer field since the Barça squad left Florence. He didn’t appear in Barça’s win against the Serie A outfit, and neither was he there for training on Thursday.

The event that led up to his absence was a violent clash of heads, purely accidental, with team mate Víctor Sánchez during Tuesday’s training session. The team’s medics decided 48 hours of rest was the best option.

Intense day’s work

Eto’o and the team trained under severe heat, interrupted several times by sprinklers, in what was a much tougher routine than their first on North American soil had been. As usual in preseason morning sessions, the players combined circuit training with the ball with a series of other intense drills.

Muscle work

The session started with some of the players working on their ischiotibial and quadriceps. Unzué, meanwhile, put the goalkeepers through their paces, with the session being watched intently by a group of some twenty college students.