St. James’s Park ready to roar as Newcastle welcome Barcelona | OneFootball

Big Champions League nights are back at St James’ Park, with Eddie Howe establishing Newcastle United as a strong team in England in recent seasons. Their first opponents of the campaign will be Spanish giants FC Barcelona.

Barcelona, after seasons of poor management and sporting issues, finally turned a page last season under Hansi Flick. The German head coach led the Catalan club to a treble and was minutes away from seeing his team qualify for the Champions League final.

Flick will now be keen to take his team one step further in Europe, and the work starts on Tyneside on Thursday. According to SPORT, Newcastle look set to create a cauldron at St James’ Park to welcome the Catalan giants.

The last time Barcelona faced Newcastle was back in 2003, when they emerged victorious, but that holds no reflection on the test that awaits them this time. Over 110,000 fans were reportedly queued on the Magpies’ website to try to purchase tickets for the game.

With a capacity of around 52,300, the majority of them supporting the Black and White army, the proposition looks daunting for Flick’s men. However, this team has shown in the past year that they have the mentality to put all that behind them and focus on the football.

Incidentally, the report also mentions that Newcastle have targeted 750 fans over ticket resale issues and cancelled 78 season tickets in the lead-up to this game. Ultimately, this is a huge game for the Tyneside-based club, as facing Barcelona is not an opportunity that comes around often.

One of the best feelings in football is undoubtedly making a noisy away crowd go pin-drop silent, and Barcelona have the attacking firepower to do just that. With or without Lamine Yamal, they have the team to beat Eddie Howe’s men, and let us wait and see how it plays out.