BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Barcelona bids for the first victory of its Champions League defense against early group leader Dynamo Kiev at Camp Nou on Tuesday.
Barcelona obtained a creditable goalless draw at Inter Milan in its opening game two weeks ago but a failure to beat Kiev would represent a setback to its hopes of winning Group F.
Kiev has three points, while Barcelona and Inter Milan have a point each. Rubin Kazan is last with no points.
On
Saturday, last season’s treble winners eked out a 2-0 win against a
tough-tackling Malaga side, a fifth straight victory which had coach
Pep Guardiola delighted, saying he wanted “to congratulate the team
more than ever.”
However, Guardiola warned that on Tuesday Barcelona may show the effects of its hard work.
“Let’s see whether we can recover from so much sacrifice and effort,” he said.
Zlatan
Ibrahimovic came off the bench to score Barcelona’s opening goal on
Saturday and become the first signing in the club’s history to score in
his first five league appearances.
Ibrahimovic replaced Thierry
Henry, who left the field with a left thigh strain which is likely to
force him to miss out on Tuesday.
Henry’s absence may provide
Andres Iniesta with a place in the starting lineup for the first time
since recovering from the torn right thigh muscle he sustained in early
May. Iniesta’s only full appearance since that injury came in the
Champions League final when Barcelona beat Manchester United 2-0.
Also injured is Dmytro Chygrynskiy, although the Ukraine defender is ineligible for Tuesday’s match.
Chygrynskiy,
who joined Barcelona from Shakhtar Donetsk on the final day of the
transfer window, acknowledged recently speaking to his fellow
internationals about Tuesday’s game but said he gave nothing away about
Barcelona.
“They know that I owe it to my new team,” Chygrynskiy said.
Kiev’s morale is high, having beaten Rubin 3-1 in its opening group game and winning its past five domestic league games.
However, there appears little likelihood of a repeat of Kiev’s previous visit to Barcelona in 1997 when it won 4-0 with Andriy Shevchenko scoring a hat-trick.
On Friday, Shevchenko needed six stitches after receiving a blow to the face during Kiev’s 2-0 win over Zorya Luhansk.
“I think I’ll be able to play at the Camp Nou. I’ll live, as they (doctors) say,” said Shevchenko, who returned to Kiev in August after a disappointing three-year spell with Chelsea.
Shevchenko said the Ukraine champion needs to play to the best of its abilities on Tuesday, his 33rd birthday.
“We have to believe in ourselves, in our ability to get a result,” he said.
In Tuesday’s other group game, Rubin will need to emerge from a slump to gain its first group win over Jose Mourinho’s Inter.
Rubin leads the Russian league but is winless since its defeat to Kiev, with coach Kurban Berdyev saying that the fatigue from playing in two tournaments is affecting the team.
Inter,
which will be without injured midfielders Wesley Sneijder and Thiago
Motta, will seek to bounce back from a 1-0 defeat at Sampdoria on
Saturday which cost the defending champion top spot in Serie A.
