Three weeks of international football means a break for La Liga and Barcelona, though there’s still plenty to interest culers, as most of the team’s players will be involved with their countries until league play resumes in mid-October.
Perhaps the best place to start will be with England’s fixture against Spain on matchday one of the Nations League.
The Three Lions will do battle with La Roja for the 29th time in all competitions (including friendlies), and for the first time since Spain beat them
in the 2024 European Championship final.
Thomas Tuchel’s side has already seen some big withdrawals from the squad, and they might well find it tough going against a squad that will include Eric Garcia, Pau Cubarsi, Rodri, Pedri, Fermin Lopez, Dani Olmo and Lamine Yamal.
Those seven players are the most from any one club side to feature in the Spain squad, and it’ll be interesting to see who Luis de la Fuente actually selects to start the game or play some part.
Elsewhere in the Nations League, the Netherlands v Germany will bring us Xavi Hernandez v Jurgen Klopp, with the former being considered very much as the pupil, and the latter as the master.
Xavi has certainly made all of the right noises about the way in which he sees his Netherlands side playing, and it was always going to centre on their shared Cruyffian principles with Barca.
The issue for one of the club’s greatest-ever midfielders is not only his lack of experience at international level, but whether he has the tactical nous to put things wrong if they do start to go wrong.
Against a manager as astute as Klopp, one has to fear for the Dutch, particularly if Xavi wants to see a gung-ho performance full of attacking intent from his side, which would leave the defence wide open.
Outside of Europe, Barcelona fans will be crossing their fingers and praying that Raphinha comes back unscathed from international duty.
The Brazilian has become so important for Barcelona that he ideally needs to be wrapped in cotton wool during this international break.
Brazil play two friendlies in Australia, which shouldn’t require the Selecao to overly exert themselves; however, the length of the trip and associated tiredness might well cause an issue.
The last thing Barca needs is for Raphinha to pick up another niggling injury that would rule him out for any length of time.
Then there is the small matter of Lionel Messi’s farewell appearance for Argentina, where there’s guaranteed not to be a dry eye in the house.
A player who is beyond compare and yet did at one stage become persona non grata with Argentine supporters, until he led his country to ultimate glory in Qatar.
Still setting records at 39 years of age, Messi and his countrymen will face Benin on October 6 at the Estadio Monumental.
Any fan of La Albiceleste and of Messi more generally will surely tune in live, and in many respects, the result and performance will be secondary to the send-off that La Pulga is expected to receive.
