David Villa Hoping To Play Again Soon

The perils of competition such as the World Club Championship were underlined last week when Barcelona striker David Villa

David Villa

sustained an injury serious enough to warrant surgery after fracturing his tibia in the semi final against Qatari side Al Sadd. Barcelona won the match but may wonder whether it’s all worthwhile after losing Villa for what may be up to five months.

While the club are not particularly optimistic, stating that they think Villa will be fit in time for the European Championships after the end of the season, the player himself appears to think he will be fit a bit sooner.  Speaking on the club’s website, Villa said “with a lot of work and people’s help, you’ll see me on the football field soon, enjoying himself like I did before.”

More crucially for Barcelona, the Champions League kicks off again in January and there’s really very little chance that Villa will be available for for any of the later rounds, even if Barcelona do progress all the way to the final.  Fortunately their strength in depth is so great that even a player of Villa’s talents will not be irreplaceable.

Barcelona Win World Club Championship Final

In slightly related news, Barcelona wrapped up the World Club Championship with a 4 – 0 win over Santos in the Nissan Stadium in Yokohama, Japan.  Anyone watching Japanese television would have been treated to one of the most bizarre post-match interviews for some time when Lional Messi was awarded the Man of the Match prize – a huge gold key from Toyota.

Messi was then pulled away from his celebrating teammates to be ‘interviewed’ by a Japanese comedian called Sanma on NTV – someone not normally allowed within a mile of post-match interviews.  It took forever for a question to be asked and when it finally game, the halfwitted Sanma asked Messi what he would do when he got old.  Clearly annoyed by this farce, Messi said that he would think about it when the time was right and walked off with his key.  Check it out: