Stoke City is set to meet with the Pep Guardiola-led side in the second game of the English Premier League on Saturday, August 20, 2016. Stoke City are in the lower half of the table as they place 11th after their draw in a keenly contested game against newly promoted side Middlesbrough.
Mark Hughes says that he feels happy with the performances of his team in pre-season.
The manager was speaking in glowing terms about the team even after they are 1-0 defeat against German outfit Hamburg. The 1-0 loss was the second friendly defeat after Stoke City started their pre-season in the worst possible manner with a 3-0 loss against lower league Burton Albion. Michael Gregoritsch scored nine minutes into the second half and this turned out to be the only goal of the game.
With every criticism ripe for the England team and Roy Hodgson getting the brunt of the deal, few have spoken up in his defense. One such expert is Bojan Krkic.
Bojan Krkic was an extremely promising teenager when he came through the ranks at Barcelona.
However, he went from the status as a relative unknown for a majority of the fans towards being on the verge of being called up for the Spain national team. More importantly,Krkic was expected to be part of the Spanish national team travelling to the Euro 2008. It would have been a crowning moment for any player wishing to be part of the national team, butKrkic’s offer came at the age of 17. He was just diagnosed with an anxiety attack just a few months ago.
Former Barcelona player, Bojan Krkic mentioned his frustrations at Stoke City to reporters. The former AC Milan forward had a lot of potential when he broke top of the famous Barcelona football academy but has now found himself at Stoke City with issues with regular starts.
Bojan Krkic recently had a run out for the Catalonia national team. Catalonia is not recognised by FIFA as an international team.
This coupled with Stoke City not having a break during Christmas meant that Krkic had been unable to feature for Catalonia in their annual friendly game. This time around, the Stoke City forward has been able to feature and expresses his delight. Krkic has played for Barcelona and Roma before joining Stoke City. A winter break is usually the norm in Spanish and Italian leagues, but it is the time when there are a lot of fixtures in the Premier League.
Stoke City came to Anfield with the intention of exposing the flaws of Liverpool and played with a different system to the one they normally play with, but, it couldn’t quite sit well as it actually opened the opportunities for the Reds instead of blocking them.
And, any possibility that the Potters might have of finding themselves in the Europa League next season, it ended with a 1-4 result.
Volker Finke was in charge of the Cameroon national football team for around 2 years but after the recent underwhelming results that the national side has been sustaining, Finke was sacked and replaced by Hugo Broos.
Bojan Krkic isn’t the most highly rated forwards in Europe or the most proactive one but he has still managed to earn the support of the managerial staff of Stoke City.
BojanKrkic’s career has seen him performing with some of the biggest clubs in the world such as: Ac.Milan, Barcelona, As.Roma and Ajax but the Catalan player failed to perform or to truly stand out with any of those clubs but his career has been brought back to life after he made a move to Stoke City.