Barça face their final week before the break with Dallas the destination

FC Barcelona have begun their final week of action for 2023 with two games marked out in the schedule. The first will be on Wednesday when they face Almería in La Liga at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys at 7pm CET. Once that game is over the blaugrana squad, with all the available players, will travel directly from the stadium to the airport to catch a flight to Dallas to play a friendly on 21 December – 8pm local time in Dallas, 3am CET on 22 December – against Mexican side Club América in the Cotton Bowl Stadium.  

Xavi Hernández will travel to Dallas with all the available players fit to take part. Right now, the coach has at his disposition all the available first team players for the game in the Cotton Bowl except for Ter Stegen, Gavi, Iñigo and Marcos Alonso who are all suffering from various injuries. In any case, the definite list of players who will be making the trip will be given once the game against Almería is over.  

The game will be a chance for FC Barcelona to visit their fans in Dallas just a few months after their last visit in July of this year during the summer tour of the USA in which the blaugranes defeated Real Madrid 3-0 in the AT&T stadium.  

Joan Laporta: “The game will be a great show in which Barça will take all the players who aren’t injured”  

President Joan Laporta reminded everyone of the great atmosphere in the city in the summer and urged culers to take the chance to support their team once again. “We will be playing against another club with a lot of history, Club América of Mexico, and form here I encourage all those culers from Dallas and Texas, who supported us during the tour in the summer, to come to the stadium to Barça first team take on one of the best teams in Mexico,” said the FC Barcelona president in an interview with the EFE news agency.  

Joan Laporta added that he is convinced that the fixture “will be a great footballing show to which Barça will turn up with its first team and all the players who are not injured.”  

The FC Barcelona president also took the opportunity to reassert the great interest aroused by the Club in the USA. “Over the past two seasons we have gone to Dallas and what’s true is that there is a lot of interest in Barça, both on and off the field. On these summer tours we have made to the United States we have great results and this summer we will repeat that,” said Joan Laporta.  

The game on Thursday will see the men’s first team make their 15th visit to the USA and their fifth to the Dallas area. As well as the victory over Real Madrid in the summer, the blaugranes in 2011 beat Club América 2-0 in the Cowboys Stadium. In 2018 a 4-2 victory against AS Roma came at the AT&T stadium and in 2022 a 2-2 draw against Juventus was played out at the Cotton Bowl Stadium.