Barcelona can return to the top of La Liga on goal difference if they beat Athletic Bilbao at Camp Nou.
Who: Barcelona vs Athletic Bilbao
What: Spain’s La Liga
Where: Camp Nou, Barcelona
When: Saturday at 4:15pm (15:15 GMT)
How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on media Sport from 12:15 GMT in advance of our live text commentary stream.
Barcelona will return to competitive action at their famous Camp Nou stadium on Saturday for the first time in two-and-a-half years when they host Athletic Bilbao.
The match will take place in front of a crowd of only 45,401 as renovations are not yet complete, but at least it’s a return home after playing most of their recent games at the city’s Estadi Olimpic.
Barca will hope for a Nou Camp boost as they chase league leaders Real Madrid. The Catalans can provisionally go top of La Liga on goal difference if they beat Bilbao, although Madrid will be in action against Eibar on Sunday.
Athletic Bilbao, meanwhile, are seventh in La Liga with 17 points after five wins, two draws and five losses. A narrow 1-0 win over Real Oviedo 1-0 last weekend meant they avoided a fourth straight defeat, with the Basque club in decidedly mixed form so far this season.
A series of delays means Camp Nou is reopening a year after it was originally slated to, following a 1.5 billion euro ($1.75bn) transformation beset by construction chaos.
The stadium will eventually have space for 105,000 fans when the top tier is completed.
Barcelona have also received the green light from UEFA to host Eintracht Frankfurt at Camp Nou in the Champions League on December 9.
The Spanish champions were forced to play two matches at their 6,000-capacity Johan Cruyff training ground stadium in the first weeks of the season after failing to get the permit they needed for Camp Nou due to safety reasons.
The previous iteration of Camp Nou was built in 1957 and had a capacity of 99,000.
With three international breaks disrupting the opening months, Barca boss Hansi Flick now has the chance to knuckle down and find solutions to his side’s problems.
They have shipped 15 goals, more than nine of the 10 teams beneath them, while the attack has also struggled to ignite in the way it did in Flick’s debut year.
Returning to their home is one of several reasons for Barca to believe the coming weeks will be positive.
“[Playing at Camp Nou] will definitely help us … for the club’s future, it’s very important, I congratulate everyone who has worked on it,” said Flick.
In Barcelona’s prior outing, they beat Celta Vigo 4-2 in Galicia, with a wild first half giving way to a far more controlled second, which might indicate the direction his team need to take.
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