WELCOME TO THE MANUEL MART\u00cdNEZ VALERO STADIUM!!! The beautiful home of Elche is the site of Barcelona\u2019s opening match of the season as the Blaugrana kick off their La Liga title defense away from home against an attack-minded team that will test the reigning back-to-back champions on their league debut. This should be all kinds of fun, and you\u2019re welcome to join us to follow and comment all the action. Vamos!<\/p>\n
Starting XI: Joan; Eric, Christensen, Mart\u00edn, Espart; Ferm\u00edn, Bernal, Gavi; Adeyemi, Yamal, Raphinha (4-3-3)<\/p>\n
Substitutes: Szczesny (GK), Aller (GK), Cubars\u00ed, Cort\u00e9s, Kounde, Cancelo, Pesquer, Fari\u00f1as, Pedri, Olmo, Gordon, Hamza<\/p>\n
Starting XI: Dituro; Affengruber, Redondo, Chust,; Sangar\u00e9, Aguado, Villar, Morente, Valera; Houary, Ni\u00f1o (3-5-2)<\/p>\n
Substitutes: Iturbe (GK), Bigas, Ponce, Buonanotte, Josan, Neto, Cepeda, Diang, Barzic, Padilla, Umaru, Morcillo<\/p>\n
Competition\/Round: 2026-27 La Liga, Matchday 2<\/p>\n
Date\/Time: Sunday, August 23, 2026, 9.30pm CET\/WAT (Barcelona), 8.30pm BST\/WAT (UK & Nigeria), 3.30pm ET, 12.30pm PT (USA), 1am IST (India, Monday)<\/p>\n
Venue: Estadio Manuel Mart\u00ednez Valero, Elche, Spain<\/p>\n
Referee: Alejandro Quintero Gonz\u00e1lez<\/p>\n
VAR: Guillermo Cuadra Fern\u00e1ndez<\/p>\n
On TV: ABC (USA), Premier Sports 1 (UK), SuperSport (Nigeria), Movistar (Spain), others<\/a><\/p>\n Online: ESPN+<\/a> (USA), Premier Sports Player (UK), FanCode (India), Movistar+ (Spain), others<\/a><\/p>\n We don\u2019t have a lot of rules here, but there are a few things to keep in mind when joining our matchday threads:<\/p>\n Even if the referee sucks or we lose the game, watch the swearing. It\u2019s just unnecessary. Also, don\u2019t discuss illegal streaming links. Those who do it will be warned, and those who post links will be instantly banned. Finally, be nice to each other. This is a Barcelona community and we don\u2019t need to offend one another.<\/p>\n Have fun with the game! Forever and ever, no matter the competition, VISCA EL BAR\u00c7A!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WELCOME TO THE MANUEL MART\u00cdNEZ VALERO STADIUM!!! The beautiful home of Elche is the site of Barcelona\u2019s opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,1771,667],"class_list":["post-74718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-barcelona","tag-barcelona-match-threads","tag-barcelona-la-liga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74718","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=74718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}