RCD Mallorca vs FC Barcelona
Competition/Round: 2025-26 La Liga, Matchday 1
Barcelona Outs & Doubts: Marc-André ter Stegen, Robert Lewandowski, Oriol Romeu, Marc Bernal (out), Joan Garcia, Wojciech Szczesny, Héctor Fort, Gerard Martín, Marcus Rashford, Roony Bardghji (doubt)
Mallorca Outs & Doubts: Samú Costa (doubt)
Date/Time: Saturday, August 16, 2025, 7.30pm CET (Barcelona), 6.30pm BST/WAT (UK & Nigeria), 1.30pm ET, 10.30am PT (USA), 11pm IST (India)
Venue: Estadi de Son Moix, Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain
Referee:
José Luis Munuera
VAR: Jorge Figueroa
How to watch on TV: ESPN2 (USA), Premier Sports 2 (UK), SuperSport (Nigeria), Movistar (Spain), others
How to watch online: ESPN+ (USA), LaLigaTV (UK), FanCode (India), Movistar+ (Spain), others
Following a dominant win over Como in the Joan Gamper Trophy last Sunday to finish a very successful preseason, Barcelona are ready for their official debut in the 2025-26 season as they travel to the beautiful Balearic Islands to meet Real Mallorca in the opening matchday of the new La Liga season on Saturday evening.
Barça come into this one looking to build on the momentum of an excellent preseason, with three good wins in Asia and a very impressive performance in the Gamper, with a complete display on both sides of the ball and five goals in the first 50 minutes. The whole squad looks sharp and well-rested, and certainly seem to have taken advantage of not having to play in the Club World Cup and enjoying a full vacation.
Hansi Flick has urged his team to get off to a roaring start, similar to last season in which the Blaugrana won 11 of their first 12 and opened up a huge lead that allowed them to navigate the ups and downs of a long season and still finish with the league title and a domestic treble.
The preseason performances showed Flick’s tactical plan remains the same: a high line and a well-coordinated offside trap, overwhelming pressure without the ball and a rich, varied attack that can score a lot of goals in every way imaginable.
La Liga will certainly be better prepared to deal with Flick Ball as 16 of their 19 opponents this season faced them at least twice last year, so it’s up to the coach and his players to keep finding solutions as teams try to adapt and come up with new answers of their own.
The few teams who had success against the Catalans all used the same formula: long switches of play to find their quick wingers on the flanks and well-timed runs through the middle to beat the offside trap, and Barça also became increasingly vulnerable to set pieces as the season went on.
Mallorca will certainly use that plan to try and cause the upset on Saturday, and they have added motivation for this one: Barça utterly demolished Mallorca in their meeting at Son Moix last season, with a spectacular second half performance en route to a 5-1 win that was the only highlight in a pretty miserable stretch in November and December for the Catalans.
The hosts don’t want to lose badly two years in a row in front of what is always an amazing home crowd, and will certainly play with a heightened level of intensity given they’re also pretty fresh and have no major injury concerns going into this one.
Barça must match Mallorca’s intensity, weather the early storm and establish their superiority as the game goes on. Hansi Flick’s team inspires a lot of confidence, so even tough road games feel a lot more winnable than they did in the recent past. But they can’t take Mallorca for granted, and must be prepared for a tough environment if they want to start their title defense the right way.
Barcelona football is back. As Johan Cruyff would say, go out and enjoy it.
Let’s dance.
POSSIBLE LINEUPS
Barcelona (4-2-3-1): Garcia; Kounde, Araujo, Cubarsí, Balde; De Jong, Pedri; Yamal, Fermín, Raphinha; Ferran
Mallorca (4-2-3-1): Román; Morey, Raíllo, Valjent, Mojica; Morlanes, Mascarell; Asano, Darder, Torre; Muriqi
PREDICTION
Mallorca will be hungry to avenge the embarrassment of last year’s home loss to Barça and will certainly put up a much better fight this time, but I’m still expecting the champs to carry on the momentum from preseason and start the new campaign with a solid win: 3-1 to the good guys.
