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Barca face playing in front of tiny crowds

It’s a big weekend for FC Barcelona, as the Catalan club readies for its first home game of the new football season.

The bad news is that the match won’t take place at Camp Nou. The €1.5bn renovation of one of football’s most famous venues drags on, with the city council recently rejecting Barca’s request to host Valencia and 27,000 fans in the middle of a building site.

Instead, the game will take place at Estadi Johan Cruyff, a pocket-sized ground on the outskirts of town. It is normally home to the Barcelona women’s team, and has capacity for just 6,000 people. The revamped Camp Nou, when finished, will hold 105,000.

The club will only allow the 16,151 people who held season tickets during the two seasons spent at Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium to buy tickets, and if demand exceeds supply there will be a lottery.

For a club that so sorely needs cash, the prospect of playing more home games in front of tiny crowds is a disaster. There may be scope to move back to the Olympic Stadium, but a packed out music schedule including Lady Gaga and Katy Perry makes that a real challenge.

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