New Barcelona signing Abidal speaks out.


Eric Abidal is one man who is happy with the way things have gone so far in Barcelona since his arrival, and the French star defender reveals this in a brief talk, reflecting a confident mind-set and assurance of his ability and strong belief in the FC Barcelona super squad. Praising the quality in FC Barcelona while comparing the atmosphere in France to that in Camp Nou, Abidal picks two differences:

To work with players of this level makes life a lot easier. Also the professionalism of the club means that it takes less time to adapt to being here. I am perplexed at the huge number of journalists around and the number of press conferences we have to do ! Another difference between the two is that during the first two weeks of pre-season training in France you do not see a football. In the end however, everything ends up with the same outcome, which is what matters most.

On the Messi strike against Munich and also on the four strikers at Barca and the number of goals they have scored in total this summer, Abidal says:

Lionel Messi is a player of great quality. Ronaldinho, Eto'o and Henry are great scorers too. We do not have to worry about the absence of plenty goals from them during the pre-season mathces. We have not started playing official games yet and we are only in the preparation stages. Things will change once we get off to the start.

Abidal, habitually racing forward to inspire attacks, is also mindful of not hanging around outside his defence line for too long as he cautions about Barca falling to counter-attacks. One admirer of Eric's game is Coach Frank Rijkaard's son, who came to Camp Nou recently spotting Abidal's shirt number and name as the shirt he wore. To this, Abidal was happy and went further to suggest that perhaps, a single shirt should be made which will contain all the names of the Barca players printed on it. Nice imagination.