Barcelona will look to continue its perfect start when it takes on Almeria on Saturday.
The Spanish champs have won their first six games of the season and have also pulled off one Champions League victory. However, not everything has been positive for the club. A controversy was recently stirred up over star player Lionel Messi making rude gestures toward his coach Gerardo Martino after being subbed out of Barcelona's 4-1 win over Real Sociedad. Messi fired back at the media for telling lies and insisted that he and his coach were on good terms.
"I didn't mean to make any gesture when Martino took me off. Nobody likes to be out, but we must accept it because it is the best for our team," Messi posted on his Facebook page. "What I will not accept is that certain media tell lies about any situation that happens around me."
The team has also drawn a great deal of criticism for the "abandonment" of its methodic possession game play in favor of a more direct approach; Rayo Vallecano dominated posession against the team in a recent game. However, Martino has been very adamant that he favors the new approach and thinks it adds more versatility to his club.
"There are always statistics, and you always pay attention to them, but I am more interested in them at the end of the season -- not so much now," Martino said about losing the possession statistic for the first time since 2008, according to ESPN. "You also have to look at who you are playing. The game last season against Rayo was similar and they had the second best possession stats behind Barcelona last year. We have changed from 66 percent possession last season to 65.8 percent this year -- you cannot say we are changing everything because of 0.2 percent difference."
Prediction: Barcelona will destroy Almeria 4-0.
Start Time: 12 p.m. EST
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