Real Madrid and Barcelona meet on Wednesday in Riyadh in the semifinal of the Spanish Super Cup (7:00 p.m. GMT), in Xavi Hernández’s first classic as a Barça coach in search of his first title at the helm of Barça.
The Super Cup returns to Arabia two years after Real Madrid beat Atlético on penalties in the 2020 final in Yedá (east), playing the 2021 edition in Spain due to the pandemic.
The trophy will play its third edition in its new four-way final format, which will face the second-placed merengue team from the last league against Barça, current Copa del Rey champions, in the first semifinal.
On Thursday, Atlético de Madrid, current league champion, will face Athletic de Bilbao, finalist in the last Copa del Rey and winner of the 2021 Super Cup.
The two matches will be played at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, which will also host the final of the trophy next Sunday.
The 30,000 tickets have already been sold (slightly less than half the capacity of the stadium due to the pandemic) put on sale for Wednesday’s classic, the first official played outside of Spain.
The merengue team, current leader of the Spanish championship, seems to arrive in a better position than its Barça rival, sixth in the championship in Spain, 17 points behind Real Madrid.
Cautious meringue
"We play against a strong opponent who has had more problems than us, but it is a single match with two teams that have the same goal of reaching the final", however, warned Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti on Tuesday.
"It is a match in which anything can happen"added Ancelotti, who will return to bet on Wednesday Frenchman Karim Benzema and Brazilian Vinicius as his attacking partner.
Benzema leads the league scorers table with 19 goals, followed by ‘Vini’ with 12, while the best Barcelona scorer is Memphis Depay with 8 goals.
Faced with the experience in classics of the veteran Italian coach, his Barcelona counterpart Xavi Hernández will debut in one as a coach, after many disputed as a player, trusting that it will serve as a boost to his project.
"For us it is a challenge, an opportunity to play a final for a title and it can be a turning point"said Xavi on Tuesday.
"The credibility that winning such a game would give the project is tremendous"added the Barça coach.
In addition to being able to count on Pedri and Ferran Torres, overcome in extremis the coronavirus, Xavi has included in the trip the Uruguayan central Ronald Araújo, the Dutch Frenkie de Jong and the young Ansu Fati, who return from injury.
‘Unpredictable’
Although Barça seems to arrive in a worse position than its rival to the meeting, Xavi, who as a player lived "classics of all colors", consider that "from my experience, a classic is unpredictable, you never know what can happen".
A victory against Real Madrid would be a boost and a move to the final of a Super Cup, whose transfer to Saudi Arabia, an ultra-conservative kingdom highly criticized by human rights defenders, continues to divide opinions.
"That he goes to another country to play has the sense that we all know it has. It makes no sense to go there to play a game that had to be played here"Athletic Bilbao player Raúl García said on Monday, pointing to economic interests.
The Spanish Federation (RFEF) signed a contract to play the Super Cup in Arabia for three years for 120 million euros (136 million dollars).
At the same time, Amnesty International asked participating teams on Monday "a gesture in favor of women’s rights" in the Arab country.
The controversy over the rights of Saudi women (who were authorized to access the Super Cup matches in 2019) had splashed the first edition of the Super Cup in the Arab country.
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