Barcelona head coach Hansi Flick has named his squad for Tuesday\u2019s Champions League quarter-final second leg showdown against Atletico Madrid at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano. The big question in the lead-up to the announcement has been whether or not Marc Bernal will be included, and the teenage midfielder\u2019s name has appeared on the list \u2013 but with an asterisk.<\/p>\n
Flick\u2019s squad was made known on Monday morning<\/a>, and although Bernal has been called up, he is yet to receive the medical green light from Barcelona\u2019s medical department. With less than 36 hours to go until kick-off in the Spanish capital, it does appear almost certain that he will not be able to take part.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Bernal, who has been linked with a move to Atleti<\/a> in recent weeks, suffered an ankle sprain<\/a> during Barcelona\u2019s La Liga victory at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano earlier this month. It had been hoped that he would be able to return in time to play in the upcoming Champions League quarter-final second leg, but it\u2019s unlikely to be the case now.<\/p>\n Flick has big decision to make in midfield<\/p>\n With Bernal set to miss out, it opens the door for several candidates to partner Pedri in the centre of Barcelona\u2019s midfield. Frenkie de Jong is back after his own injury issue, although the match may come too soon for him to play from the start. If that is the case, it would likely be Gavi or Eric Garcia that is in the line-up, given that Marc Casado is not trusted by Flick.<\/p>\n Winning the midfield battle will be crucial if Barcelona are to overturn their two-goal deficit to Atleti. Having Pedri in there gives them a huge edge, but he will need support \u2013 de Jong or Gavi would be best-suited to give him some, but whether either starts at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona head coach Hansi Flick has named his squad for Tuesday\u2019s Champions League quarter-final second leg showdown against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[179,92,187,927,851,728,930,224,664,2366],"class_list":{"0":"post-3281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-barcelona","8":"tag-atletico-madrid","9":"tag-barcelona","10":"tag-champions-league","11":"tag-eric-garcia","12":"tag-frenkie-de-jong","13":"tag-gavi","14":"tag-hansi-flick","15":"tag-marc-bernal","16":"tag-pedri","17":"tag-riyadh-air-metropolitano"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}