Barcelona has asked to put forward their collision with a real Valladolid to help with their semi-final preparations of the Champions League. Despite the Blaugrana that sends a formal request to La Liga, the competition will reject their petition.
On Friday, Barcelona manager Hansi Flick released a furious anger about the planning in Spain, demanded a conversation with those who are in charge of the list of fixture and referred it as 'a joke'. This was then supported by a Barcelona statement about this issue. The most important frustration for Flick was that their League collision with Real Valladolid was planned for the 21:00 CEST in the Nuevo Jose Zorrilla, which means that they do not return to Barcelona until the early hours of the morning, only two days from their Champions League semi-final second stage with Inter in Milan.
According to Diario As, Barcelona has sent a formal letter to La Liga with the request to move the game to one of the slots at 2:00 PM, 16:15 or 6:30 PM, to give them time to travel back to Barcelona without influencing their sleep. Yet MD says that La Liga does not intend to change their schedule for the collision of Valladolid-Barcleona, which would originally take place at 14:00 on Sunday, before the European luminaires were announced. The reason is that Barcelona did not submit their request to La Liga once the game was announced, but 14 days later.
It is certainly a damn comparison for La Liga with Ligue 1, the Premier League or the Bundesliga. Paris Saint-Germain has completely placed a fixture from the weekend to facilitate their preparations for the Champions League, while German and Italian parties are regularly planned for Friday evening to give teams more time to prepare themselves in this case, with the first leg that takes place on Wednesday.