FCBARCELONA.CAT

01.03.2010 11:56

Training affected by international exodus

Marc Guillén / Vanessa Forns

With much of the squad called away on international duty, the numbers at Monday’s training session were made up by players from the reserves. Ibrahimovic was forced to miss the session due to back problems.

Guardiola will without much of his squad until Thursday. On Monday morning, he completed his reduced senior squad with nine members of the reserve squad at the Joan Gamper training grounds.

Players from Barça Atlètic

From the senior squad, only Touré, Chygrynskiy, Maxwell, Pedro, Bojan, Valdés, Pinto and Milito were available. Josep Guardiola called on nine players from Barça Atlètic to take part in the session - Thiago, Victor Vazquez, Benja, Illie, Elvis, Espasandín, Armando, Benítez and Luque.

Of these players, only Thiago made the starting line-up in Barça Atlètic’s 1-1 draw on Saturday against Logroñés. Victor Vazquez came on for the last 35 minutes of the match while Espasandín was on the subs bench. The remaining reserves who trained with the senior squad today were not involved in Saturday’s match.

Ibra unable to train

With the rest of the reserve squad enjoying a day off, training was switched to pitch number 2, which is normally used by the team managed by Luis Enrique. However, Ibrahimovic did not train due to a back problem while Keita and Abidal both continued with their respective recovery programmes.