Barça star blames pre-season for low form

By European Football
October 4 2006

Barcelona’s Mexican star Rafael Márquez has declared that the reasons for the underachieving performances and low form of the team can be found in the bad pre-season, especially, the big number of matches and the tiring tours through Mexico and USA. Barcelona spent two weeks in early August touring around North America, where they played four matches. Then, back to Europe, they played five tough matches in only twelve days.

Then, the Spanish and European champions faced Espanyol twice for the Spanish SuperCup, then lost against Sevilla in the European SuperCup and finally had a friendly against Bayern München (the traditional Joan Gamper trophy) before the start of the league.

Nowadays, though Barça is leading the table in Spain and is doing well in the Champions, the low form of the team has caught the attention of worldwide fans and media; the team isn’t playing like it used to and its biggest star, Ronaldinho, is in very low form.

Rafa Márquez, in a press conference, stated:

“Pre-season training wasn’t done the way it should have been and we accumulated many matches, many trips and very few resting hours.

“We are now trying to adapt and working to find our form

“Maybe it hasn’t been noticed much in these last matches, but Ronnie is a player to be careful of, because any moment he can define a match with a pass, a move or a goal.

“We’ve had some tough matches, starting by Sevilla, and we need to work harder to get rid of these doubts that we’re generating about our form.

October will be challenging for Barcelona, having to face Sevilla and Real Madrid in the local league and two matches against Chelsea for the Champions Cup.

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