The BG Brief is Blaugranagram’s news briefing show, bringing you all the latest about Barça and European football in the blink of an eye, on all platforms.
Welcome to the first installment of The BG Brief: your place for a quick recap of everything going on in and around FC Barcelona and for European football.
Do note that you can watch/listen to the show, rather than read it, at the bottom of this article.
Wojciech Szczesny came out of retirement, only five weeks after he announced it and signed a one-year deal for FC Barcelona, finally joining the Catalan side.
When asked, he said that you cannot say no to a club of Barcelona’s stature and that he’s extremely excited to get going. He is, of course, yet to have his official debut with the club with both him and Hansi Flick believing that he needs just a little bit more time to regain form.
Staying on the theme of retirement, Andrés Iniesta, football and club legend, formally announced his retirement on October 8.
8, of course, being the iconic number he wore on his back for so many years. And very fittingly, you ceremony was held in Port Vell in Barcelona. Both old players as well as new players such as Dani Olmo were in attendance, as well as new head coach Hansi Flick.
The footballing icon also took this time to announce that he will be continuing his work in football through academy work, and he’s even enrolled in a coaching course, although he’s yet to take his first class.
For the Camp Nou, the rebuild is going steadily. The first seats, both blue and red: some of them have been installed already but a fight broke out earlier this week between Albanian in Romanian workers from an outsourced company, and the manager was forced to tell everyone to go home while things were taken care of.
20 people were involved in the fight according to eyewitnesses, and several of them sustained minor injuries.
The club is, as expected, yet to release an official statement on the matter, and whether they do decide to do so is, of course, up for speculation.
But one thing is certain, and that is that this will not work in favor of the timeline for the Camp Nou, with the expected return time for fans to be able to attend the ground being likely to find itself sometime after the new year.
Barcelona Femení took a heavy loss midweek. Their first loss of the season, in fact, in the Women’s Champions League. That loss was against Manchester City, where neither Pere Romeu nor the players seemed to really get a foot into that game and change things in their favor.
But change things in their favor overall, they did, as they came back from a 1-0 deficit at half-time against Espanyol, Sunday afternoon, to then beat them with a whopping score of 7-1 where Ewa Pajor, who continues to impress, scored another hat-trick in search of the women’s Pichichi trophy. This season so far, her and Robert Lewandowski lead the charts, having prompted the nickname Ewandowski for the Polish pair.
Lamine Yamal, hailing from Rocafonda, home of the 304 zip code, now the star of both Barcelona and the Spain national team, unfortunately had to walk out injured as Spain beat Denmark by a 1-0 score, courtesy of Martin Zubimendi.
He was taken off in injury time for Sergio Gomez and was seen limping as he left the stadium that same night.
He has since returned to Barcelona by plane, and will not feature as Spain take on Serbia midweek. Instead, he will be recovering from a hamstring strain in his left leg.
We thank you for tuning in to the first installment of The BG Brief. I have been Omar Hawwash, and I thank you for your time.
Listen to the briefing below, or click on one of the platforms to watch it there instead:
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