Barcelona faced a challenging start to their Champions League campaign, suffering a 2-1 defeat to AS Monaco at the Stade Louis II, with Eric Garcia’s early red card adding to their woes. Under the guidance of Hansi Flick, the Catalan side, who reached the quarter-finals last season, are determined to go even further this year.
In La Liga, however, Barcelona has been in excellent form, winning all six of their opening league matches. At the time of writing, they had just secured a dominant 5-1 victory away against Villarreal and were preparing for upcoming fixtures against Getafe and Osasuna.
Young Boys, the reigning Swiss champions, also had a disappointing start to their Champions League journey, losing 3-0 at home to Aston Villa. Despite that setback, they bounced back in their domestic league with a 4-1 win over Winterthur, their first victory of the season after seven attempts.
Although they are not expected to provide much resistance to Barcelona, Young Boys have been strong on the road, remaining unbeaten in five consecutive away matches, four of which were wins. Before facing Barça, they were scheduled to host Grasshoppers in the Swiss league.
Barcelona has been hit with a major blow as captain and goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen will be out for eight months. The club has been exploring potential replacements, including Wojciech Szczesny and Keylor Navas, but for now, backup keeper Iñaki Peña will step in.
The Catalan side will also be without key players such as Frenkie De Jong, Gavi, Andreas Christensen, and Ronald Araújo.
Despite these absences, they still have plenty of attacking options, with Robert Lewandowski (6 goals, 2 assists in La Liga), Raphinha in strong form, and young star Lamine Yamal (3 goals, 5 assists in the league), who scored in their Champions League opener against Monaco.
Young Boys are also dealing with a few absentees, including Anthony Conte, Saidy Janko, and Frederik Pfeiffer. Nevertheless, they will look to striker Silvère Ganvoula (4 league goals), Swiss international Joel Monteiro (3 goals, 1 assist), and Cedric Itten, who had 10 goals and 3 assists last season but has struggled for form this year.
Prediction
Young Boys have a habit of being involved in high-scoring games, with their last nine top-flight matches seeing both teams score.
Barcelona, though not quite matching those numbers, have seen seven of their last nine games without a clean sheet. Given Barcelona’s potent attack, a goal-filled match is likely.
Prediction: Barcelona 4 : 1 Young Boys
