Barcelona go into the second leg of their Spanish Super Cup 2016 match on Wednesday against Sevilla as the favourites to win the title. The Catalan giants have a 2-0 lead from the first leg, thanks to goals from Luis Suarez and Munir El Haddadi.
The pressure on Sevilla to reduce the score deficit in the second leg gets further as they now are pitted against Barca -- the defending La Liga champions -- in their home territory at the Camp Nou.
Barca do have slight injury problems ahead of the match with midfield maestro Andres Iniesta, goalkeeper Ter Stegen and French defender Jeremy Mathieu (hamstring) ruled out of the match and Neymar and Rafinha away for Rio 2016 Olympics duty, but the injury worries for Sevilla are a tad bit more.
Defenders Sergio Escudero and Adil Rami both miss out through injury, while the likes of Daniel Carrico, Benoit Tremoulinas and Michael Krohn-Dehli also remain absent, giving coach Jorge Sampaoli a major headache.
"The idea is to modify some things, knowing that we play another game in three days," Sampaoli said in his pre-match press conference. "The 120 minutes against [Real] Madrid [in the UEFA Super Cup] and the intensity of the match against Barcelona was traumatic and knowing we play another game in three days, we need to change some players to get fresh players for Saturday. We have a lot of injuries," he added.
For Barca coach Luis Enrique, it is all about asking his side to do what they always do the best. "We plan for the game the same as ever. The idea is to win, be better than Sevilla and to do that by playing better football," said Enrique.
"As far as motivation is concerned, there's nothing for me to say because the players know very well that after 90 minutes of play tomorrow we can win a title."
Spanish Super Cup 2016 second leg: Barcelona vs Sevilla is scheduled to kick off at 2:30 a.m. IST (Thursday) [10 p.m. BST, 5 p.m. EST] on Aug. 17.
Where to watch live
India: TV: Sony Six, Sony Six HD. Live streaming: Sony Liv
UK: TV: Sky Sports 1/HD, Now TV. Live streaming: Sky Go
USA: TV: ESPN 2, ESPN Deportes. Live streaming: Watch ESPN
Spain: TV: TV3, Telecinco Espana. Live streaming: None
