Neymar absent as Barcelona prepares for Club World Cup

Lionel Messi believes Barcelona team-mate Neymar has developed into a “more complete” player since their meeting in the Club World Cup final in 2011. Barcelona were greeted by 226 children from its soccer school in Tokyo when stepping on to the pitch at the Mitsuzawa Stadium in Yokohama.

As European and South American champions respectively, Barcelona and River Plate enter the Club World Cup at the semi-final stage and could potentially face each other in Sunday’s final. The children then sang the club’s anthem, “El Cant del Barca”, as the players looked on.

Guangzhou – who beat Club America of Mexico 2-1 in the previous round – won the Asian Champions League title last month.

“Obviously Guangzhou have proved they are a strong team”, Barca midfielder Sergio Busquets told reporters.

The entire squad made the trip including Arda Turan who has yet to make his debut for the Champions League title holders despite joining on a five-year deal from Atletico Madrid over the summer.

“But now we’ve incorporated the idea that, with just a couple of touches, we can get in front of the opposition’s goal”. “We are here for the Club World Cup and it’s very important to us”.

The Spanish champions can not expect to have things all their own way against Guangzhou – the Chinese are on a 28-match unbeaten run going back to May. The tournament, which features the top clubs from Fifa’s six continental confederations plus the champions of the host country, returns to Japan for the first time since 2012.

There are more reasons to be positive but I think that two of them could prove to be the key factors in the double legged tie next year.