Barca raise Derry profile

A multi-million-pound Barcelona squad arrived on Foyleside on Monday afternoon ahead of tonight’s (Tuesday’s) high-profile friendly meeting with eircom League Premier Division side Derry City at the Brandywell. Kick-off: 5.30pm.

For Derry, this game represents creates almost as many logistical problems as it does financial rewards for the club – they are due to fly out to Cyprus early tomorrow morning for a Uefa Cup qualifying round tie against Apoel Nicosia on Thursday evening.

Ideally, they would have travelled to the Mediterranean holiday isle at an earlier date – the league’s other Uefa representatives, Shelbourne, made their journey to Slovenia on Monday.

There is little room for that manner of nay-saying, however, on the day that a World Cup winner of 13 months ago graces the Brandywell turf, particularly as Derry were staring down the abyss of extinction just four years ago.

That wave of euphoria, generated by the presence of such a strong Barca side, should ensure a full house at the Brandywell this evening, although a limited number of tickets are still available and will be on sale from the stadium from 9.30pm this morning.

Led by their new manager Frank Rijkaard and including such talents as £20m summer signing Ronaldinho, former Arsenal winger Marc Overmars and defender Carles Puyol, rumoured to be a £12m target of Manchester United, the Barca squad was greeted on their arrival by a couple of hundreds observers, who were delighted to obtain autographs and get photographs taken with some of the finest footballers on the planet.

The Barca players were said to have been thrilled with the relatively low level of hype on their arrival in the north-west – these are, after all, players accustomed to 100,000-strong crowds and minute monitoring of their personal movements.

They will experience far short of that this evening, but there should be a jovial atmosphere at the venue for an exhibition match against one of Europe’s traditional powers.


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Derry City chairman Jim Roddy admitted that the club were set to benefit from a considerable windfall through the visit of Spanish giants Barcelona to the Brandywell this evening, but remained coy on the extent of the income to be generated by the game.

“It will be a windfall,” he said. “How much is impossible to say because there are other things going on. There are major costs involved in bringing them, but we will do well out of it.”

The Derry chairman admitted to being pleased that Barcelona opted to bring as strong a squad as possible to Foyleside, which should ensure that the few remaining tickets are snapped up long before the 5.30pm kick-off this evening.

“At the start, there was a great bit of euphoria when it was announced. Then people got it into themselves that it wouldn’t be the first time coming.

“But that has changed since the aircraft landed on the runway today. We had people like Overmars signing autographs and getting photographs taken with local kids. It has gone through the city like wildfire. The buzz is unbelievable.”


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