Arsenal hosts Barcelona in the first-leg match of UEFA Champions League last 16 at the Emirates Stadium on 16 February 2011. This is going to be the repeat of last season quarter final fixture that saw Barcelona defeating 6-3 on aggregate. First, Gunners secured a 2-2 draw at home before being demolished 4-1 thanks to a superb Lionel Messi show.
This time the North London club would like to atone for their last year’s humiliation and progress to the quarter final. However, they will have to do it without their talismanic midfielder Samir Nasri who has been sidelined for two weeks with a hamstring injury. Though he has already got over the injury, but manager Arsene Wenger does not want to gamble on someone like Nasri who has perhaps been the best player for Arsenal so far this season. Here, it is noteworthy that the Gunners are still very much in the Premier League title race with 4 points behind leader Manchester United.
Barcelona failed to defend their Champions League title last season, but this season they would like to get it back. In fact, the Catalan side has been in high-flying form with already having a 5-point lead over second-placed Real Madrid. Moreover, they will take motivation from last year’s success against Wenger boys. They have a number of in-form players like Lionel Messi, David Villa, Pedro, Xavi, and all of them are capable of producing moment of glory that can turn out to be the winning passage for Barcelona.
Both sides play attacking style of football and that is what would attract millions of football fans who would like to see some exciting attacking-counter attacking football that these two clubs always intend to produce.
Football fans of South Asia would be able to watch this much-awaited Champions League match live on Ten Action television channel. The match will kick off at 19:45 GMT and according to Indian time the match starts at 01:15am on 17th February 2011.
Ten Action, a sibling of more popular sports channel Ten Sports, is comparatively a new channel in the sports horizon, but the good thing is that it has already attracted a huge number of football fans thanks to its high quality coverage of various top-level football tournaments. So, it is expected that the upcoming match between Arsenal and Barcelona would be well-covered by Ten Action.
0 comments:
Post a Comment