Barcelona to play Man City in a friendly in August to raise funds for fight against ALS

According to SPORT’s Alfredo Martinez, Barcelona will lock horns with Premier League champions Manchester City in a friendly at Camp Nou in August to raise funds for the fight against Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

The match will be played in honour of former Barcelona goalkeeper and coach Juan Carlos Unzue, who has been battling ALS for over two years, having been diagnosed in February 2020.

The 55-year-old has since dedicated his life to raising awareness and generating funds to battle the condition.

After spending some years as a player at Barcelona in the 1990s, Unzue was the club’s goalkeeping coach between 2003 and 2010, working with Pep Guardiola for two years during that stint. He returned to Camp Nou as part of Luis Enrique’s backroom staff a few years later.

Given his roots at Barcelona and his close ties with Manchester City manager Guardiola and director Txiki Begiristain, the two teams are now set to play a charity match to help raise funds for the fight against ALS.

While the report from SPORT indicates that everything apart from a date for the match has been finalised, The Athletic states that the friendly encounter will take place on August 24, three weeks into the 2022/23 Premier League season.

The report from The Athletic further states that the friendly encounter was supposed to play in the summer of last year. However, it was postponed because the Covid-19 protocols in place in Spain at the time would have prohibited fans from attending the game.

The charity game will mark Pep Guardiola’s first return to Camp Nou since 2016 when he managed Manchester City against Barcelona in a UEFA Champions League group game.