PREVIEW | Granada v FC Barcelona
FC Barcelona travel to Granada for today’s Copa del Rey quarter final, less than a month after visiting the city in the league and coming away with a big win. With several of the big guns already out of the competition, Barça have a fine chance to extend their record haul of 30 cup trophies, but as teams have already been finding out, in the one-legged format being used this year … anything can happen.
The game is a 9.00pm kick off local time (CET), while you can find out what time that is where you are and whether any channels are screening the game live by going to our guide. And don’t forget we have minute.by-coverage of the game and commentary on Radio Barça in our Match Center.
After starting the season among the frontrunners, the Andalusians (who are also playing European football for the first time ever) have slipped to eighth in the table.
The story so far
Barça’s cup campaign began two weeks ago with a 2-0 extra time win against fellow Catalans UE Cornellà from the third tier of the pyramid. They followed that with a 2-1 victory at second division Rayo Vallecano with goals from Messi and De Jong.
Granada, meanwhile, have beaten fourth tier San Juan of Pamplona, third tier Cultural Leonesa, second division Malaga and last week put an end to third tier Madrid club Navalcarnero’s cup dream with a 6-0 win. Like Barça, all those games were played on the road.
The other three quarter finals are:
Almeria v Sevilla
Levante v Villarreal
Real Betis v Athletic Club
Last time we met
It was just a few weeks ago, on January 9, that the team met in a league fixture that Barça won comfortably, 4-0, with two goals each from Griezmann and Messi. It was Barça’s joint-biggest win in 2020/21, the other being the victory by the same score against Dynamo Kyiv in the Champions League.
Did you know?
Barça and Granada met in the cup final in 1959, the only time the Andalusians have ever played in it. The Catalans won 4-1 in front of a crowd of 90,000 at the Santiago Bernabéu.
Barça have qualified for the semi-finals in 13 of the last 15 editions of the competition. Let’s make it 14 out of 16!
Leo Messi has scored against 24 different teams in the cup, but Granada is not one of them… yet!
The only previous time that Ronald Koeman managed a team in a Copa del Rey campaign (2007-8), he won it. That was with Valencia.
Barça have not had deal with a penalty shootout in the cup this century. The last time was against Mallorca in 1998 (although the Spanish Super Cup game with Real Sociedad last month did go to penalties).
Team news
Sergiño Dest has been declared fully fit and in the squad, so the only players now out through injury are Gerard Piqué, Philippe Coutinho and Ansu Fati. Koeman has also decided to leave out Matheus and Junior.
Ronald Koeman says
“It will be very different to the league game. Like us they’ve had a lot of games, they even had European qualifiers too … We mustn’t forget that the other day we struggled to get our game going. It was until we managed to score that things opened up.”
“The cup isn’t more important, but we’re closer to winning it because there are fewer games. In the league, Atlético Madrid are also very strong and all we can do is keep winning and hope they have some off days. We dropped too many points away to team we shouldn’t be dropping points against.”
“The important thing for Piqué and Fati is for them to recover fully rather than setting dates. It would be great to have them against PSG, but I can’t say anything for sure.”