Top 3 players to play for both sides:
Honourable mentions include Pedro, Gudjohnsen and Petit.
3) Deco
2) Cesc Fabregas
1) Samuel Eto’o
Ps: I am not ranking these players on how well they played for each club… Eto’o didn’t really have the same impact at Chelsea as Fabregas did. Nor did Deco on his move to the Premier League from Spain.
Head to Head:
Since 2000, the two teams have met each other 14 times in the UEFA Champions League. Of those, Chelsea have only won four. However, they have only lost four too, with the majority of their games ending up in a draw.
Of course, their most recent Champions League meeting was last season when they were heavily beaten by the Catalan side 3-0 in the Round-of-16.
Barcelona team news:
It most certainly won’t be the best Barcelona team you will sew this season- not by a long way. A lot of their key players have been allowed more rest time after serving internationally in the Copa America. The likes of Lionel Messi, Philippe Coutinho and Luis Suarez have not travelled with the rest of the squad.
They will, however, have new signing Griezmann at their disposal who will more than likely get his run out along side the likes of Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets and Samuel Umtiti.
Chelsea team news:
Tammy Abraham and Kepa Arrizabalaga will be hoping to - quite literally – turn up for the big games as they both missed the disappointing defeat to Kawasaki Frontale through illness and could make a return on Tuesday.
N’Golo Kante has returned back to the UK, still nursing the knee injury he suffered towards the end of last season as Chelsea look to get their little fan favourite back to full fitness ahead of the start of the new season.
Of course, the likes of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Willian and Antonio Rudiger are all out as they continue their rehabilitation from their length injuries.
Mount, Olivier Giroud, Kurt Zouma, Ross Barkley and Marcos Alonso will more than likely start this match. Pedro too will more than likely face his former team.
What have Barcelona been up to?
Well… they signed Antoine Griezmann to add to the already ridiculous attack they have. But besides from that, they haven’t really been doing anything but training. In fact, their game against Chelsea will be their first real match to kick off their pre-season.
After Chelsea, they will play Vissel Kobe in the Rakuten Cup of which the three teams are all competing for.
Interesting start for Lampard:
Frank Lampard hasn’t exactly set the world alight in his Chelsea pre-season tour with one draw, one win, and one defeat in his opening three matches. He suffered his first defeat as Chelsea manager in their most recent match to Kawasaki Frontale.
Lampard has by no means looked to play a strong team in any of the matches and has instead continued with his philosophy and prevailed the youth players. Mason Mount and Ethan Ampadu have been the best performers of the many good young players that Chelsea have at their disposal.
Hello and welcome to VAVEL UK’s live coverage of what will undoubtable be Lampard’s toughest and most anticipated pre-season match against the Spanish giants Barcelona. Kick-off at the Saitama Stadium in Japan will be tomorrow morning at 11:30 BST.
But we will be posting pre-match content before then so make sure to keep coming back in the meantime.