Barcelona will travel to the Anoeta Stadium to take on Real Sociedad on September 10 in a La Liga encounter, the second for the two sides. The game will be played at what is called the Estadio Municipal de Anoeta. The game starts at 1600 hours GMT.
Real Sociedad, who had won their opening match, will have an injury worry going into the game. There is a good chance that Joseba Llorente may have to miss out on this encounter, but thankfully for the side, Agirretxe will look to start off as a striker. He had a great game at Gijón, where he drilled in a brace of goals and he will now look to lead his side’s charge against a side which has often been tipped as the best in the world.
There will be no place for Carlos Martínez, who was handed over a red card in the game against Sporting while McDonald Mariga misses out because of his fitness worries and that could mean that he will not be debuting for the side yet.
Possible starting eleven for Real Sociedad: Bravo, Demidov, Bella, Estrada, Martinez, Illarramendi, Aranburu, Zurutuza, Vela, Preito, Agirretxe.
The one aspect that the champions Barcelona will be worried about is the number of injuries to go with the exhaustion that the international games could have caused.
For starters, Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique will miss out to injuries while the fatigue factor could affect the likes of Busquets, Iniesta, Villa, Mascherano and Messi, all of whom were a part of the international fixtures in the previous couple of weeks. Messi was in the Indian sub-continent, where the conditions were so oppressive that the footballers were allowed to take an extra break in each of the two halves. This would mean that Pep Guardiola could rest a couple of them.
The good news for the side is that Dani Alves will be back for selection after a one-game suspension.
Possible starting eleven for Barcelona: Valdes, Alves, Busquets, Abidal, Maxwell, Xavi, Keita, Iniesta, Villa, Messi, Pedro.
Match Preview: Things will not get easy for the Real Sociedad, who will be facing a strong Barcelona side, after they had crushed Villareal 5-0 in the previous game they had played. Soceidad’s own performance against Sporting de Gijón was good enough for the side to take heart from as would be the fact that they had beaten Barcelona 2-1 in one of the legs previous season, before going down 5-0 in the second leg.