The news is a little brief today, but in trawling the net, I only really found a couple of notable articles: both of which were from the official website. I couldn't find a report of the Barcelona B match anywhere, even on Marca, Sport and AS. For the record, they lost 1-0 to Hercules, yet another reason why the club should not renew Eusebio's contract, but they probably will anyway. Vicente Del Bosque called up eight Barca players for the friendly against Venezuela, but was kind enough to leave Xavi out so the legendary midfielder can recuperate further. Look out for a few garbage reports after the jump, unsurprisingly from my beloved English tabloid media. Apparently, we only have 22 million euros to spend in the summer. Clearly there was a mistranslation...
FC Barcelona is the club providing the most of the 23 players that Vicente del Bosque has named in his latest Spain squad. The selected players are Valdés, Piqué, Puyol, Thiago, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta and Cesc for next Wednesday's game in Malaga against Venezuela, the last fixture for the national team before the definitive squad will be named for this summer's European Championship in Poland and Ukraine.
But as he says "anything can happen in football ... and we'll fight to the end." But there are no hard feelings about the compromised situation they are in, because "if Madrid are leaders, it's because they deserve to be ... we just have to do everything we can to win as many games as possible".
Inter want Barcelona boss Guardiola to replace Ranieri - report - Goal.com
The Blaugrana boss is out of contract at the end of the season and, according to MARCA, Moratti is hoping to lure the former Spain international to San Siro with the promise of a net salary of €10 million per year. However, the paper claims that Guardiola has instructed his representative, Jose Maria Orobitg, to ignore any offers from elsewhere until he decides whether to remain at Camp Nou beyond the summer.
Ashley Cole will seek to join Barcelona in the summer if Chelsea stick with beleaguered boss Andre Villas-Boas. The Portuguese is under fire following a disappointing debut season so far at Stamford Bridge and has fallen out with several senior players in the Blues' dressing room.
However, Barcelona-based newspaper Sport has revealed the Champions League holders are short of funds, after spending heavily to land Cesc Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez last summer. It claimed a limit of £22 million had been set for transfer fees for the next window and that the club's hierarchy envisaged spending it on a single player.
The opportunity to play regularly with a number of his Spanish international team-mates at the Camp Nou is sure to be attractive to Martinez, but there is some doubt about whether Barcelona could afford the £34 million buyout clause in his Bilbao contract.
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