A clash of champions

The winners of last season’s Champions league and UEFA Cup, FC Barcelona and Shakhtar Donetsk, meet on Friday night in Monaco to claim the European Super Cup. Kick-off is at 8.45 pm local time.

Pep Guardiola’s Barça team have an historic opportunity to add their already impressive list of achievements. In the space of just a few months they have accumulated the Spanish Cup, the Spanish League, the Champions League and the Spanish Super Cup. And now they can make it five out of five by beating the UEFA Cup champions Shakhtar Donetsk to lift the European Super Cup in the Stade Louis II.

It will be Barça’s seventh European Super Cup . The Club hasn’t had much luck in the competition up to now and has won it only twice, both times when the trophy was disputed over two legs. Since the format was changed to a single match final, Barça’s only participation was the sad 3-0 defeat against Sevilla in 2006.

All travel to Monaco

With Sevilla in mind, the objective is to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The coaching staff have kept to the usual routine for away matches and have taken all 24 available senior squad players to Monaco, including Márquez and Iniesta, who are still recovering from injury and will definitely not be fit to play. The players went through their paces on Thursday evening in the final training session before the mach, held on the pitch of the stadium itself and were able to confirm that the playing surface leaves much to be desired.

Familiar faces

Shakhtar Donetsk is well known to the Barça camp. The two sides met in the group stage of last season’s Champions League when they shared the honours with Barça winning 2-1 in the Ukraine while Shakhtar took the points in Catalonia with a 3-2 victory in the Camp Nou. Both games were a delight to watch, which comes as no surprise from two teams that like to play good football.

Dmytro Chygrynskyy

One of the stars of the Ukrainian team coached by Mircea Lucescu is Dmytro Chygrynskyi , the elegant central defender who announced on Thursday that he would be moving to FC Barcelona after Friday’s match. No doubt all eyes will be on him. Most of Shakhtar’s other leading lights are foreigners, mainly Brazilians. They’ll be missing Brandao, but the attacking threesome of Ilsinho, Luiz Adriano and Fernandinho has more than enough quality to keep their side in the European elite.