What to look out for on Barca’s 2025-26 pre-season tour

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Barcelona are - belatedly - in Asia for pre-season fixtures against Vissel Kobe, FC Seoul and Daegu. Here’s a few things to look out for as the good guys get back to work after the summer break.

Barcelona’s new goalkeeper

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For fairly obvious reasons, Joan Garcia’s arrival at Barcelona from local rivals Espanyol was fairly low key, but there’s no doubt the Catalan giants will be hoping he can have a massive impact at the club.

The tour offers Garcia the chance to debut, to get off to a confident start with his new team-mates and

to show that he deserves to be Barcelona’s No. 1 stopper for the 2025-26 season.

Injury to Marc-Andre ter Stegen means the German really is out of the picture right now, leaving 35-year-old (previously retired) Wojciech Szczęsny as Garcia’s main competition for the starting spot in the coming campaign.

How are Rashford & Roony looking?

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Two more players eager to impress will be none other than Marcus Rashford, freshly arrived from Manchester United and ready to wear his new No. 14 shirt at Barcelona, and Roony Bardghji - famously named after another Man Utd legend

Rashford is clearly delighted to join Barca but has a lot of work to do and plenty to prove. He’s been told he’s surplus to requirements at United, failed to earn a permanent move to Aston Villa last season and will be running out of options if he can’t make this move work.

Yet there’s a lot of optimism around that Rashford can be success but much will depend on whether he can stay fit and – perhaps more importantly – keep the right attitude and mentality.

Rashford knows he’s not going to be a starter at Barcelona, for now at least, so can’t really afford a slow start to his career with the Catalan giants.

The Fantastic Four

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Barcelona’s youngsters continue to catch the eye and there’s another batch of La Masia graduates on the plane and hoping to stake a claim.

Injury has unfortunately ended Ibrahima Diarra’s hopes, but Hansi Flick has still selected Dro Fernandez, Jofre Torrents and cousins Guille and Toni Fernandez.

All four players are extremely highly rated and will be hoping they can go on and break into the first-team in the 2025-26 season.

The next three games offer them all the chance to show Flick what they can do.

Lewandowski or the false 9?

Robert Lewandowski will turn 37 next month and the suggestion is that he may well be used more sparingly in the coming campaign as a result.

The Poland international banged in 27 goals in La Liga alone last season, but it looks increasingly like this could be his last year at the club.

Hansi Flick has been tipped to tweak formation more often and use Dani Olmo as a false 9 next season, to give Lewandowski a break, and also shake things up a little.

We may catch some glimpses of the future, and Flick’s favored set-up, over the next week or so.

Who could still be sold this summer?

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Flick has named a 30-man squad for the trip East and we may get a few clues as to which players are on the fringes of the squad ahead of the new campaign.

Pau Victor has been left at home - ahead of an expected to move to Braga - while Oriol Romeu wasn’t on the plane either and should also leave this summer.

But there may well be more departures. Deco has said Barca have too many center-backs, while it’s claimed Flick thinks he has more midfielders that he really needs in the squad currently.

It’s never wise to make too many assumptions from pre-season fixtures, but it will still be interesting to see how much game time some players see.

The chance to impress is also on offer to any players who may feel they are on the fringes or heading towards the exit door right now.

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