There is nothing curious about two European teams playing a friendly match. In fact, this summer we have had several clashes between big teams from the continent, which is not an uncommon thing. What is strange, and especially in today’s professional football, is that a friendly game takes place when the season has already started.
Manchester City are the current champions of the Premier League, whose 2022/2023 season has already played 3 Matchdays. For their part, Barcelona are the runners-up in La Liga, and in this case the 2022/2023 season has already had 2 Matchdays. It is really hard to understand, if there were intentions to play with each other, why do it now?
This is even more striking if we take into account other factors: they are two teams that will surely fight for the title, so a friendly early in the season would unnecessarily wear down the players for the next Matchday; it no longer serves as preparation (the main objective of the friendlies) because the season has begun, and on the other hand, the start of the Champions League will not be long, where they will face other strong teams from the continent.
Why a friendly game when the season has already started?
The reason for this goes beyond the football reasons. Sportingly, a game between these two teams when the season has already started makes no sense, and could even be considered an unnecessary risk since the players expose their physique for a friendly match in which nothing is at stake.
However, there is a noble cause behind this friendly between these two great Europeans. All proceeds will be donated to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) research. ALS is a disease of the nervous system that weakens muscles and affects physical function and affects approximately 5 in 100,000 people worldwide. One of the most famous people who suffered from this disease was Stephen Hawking.