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Camp Nou disinfected ahead of Barca’s return vs struggling Leganes

Madrid Desk, Jun 16 (efe-epa).- A team of specialists on Tuesday disinfected every area players will pass through in the Camp Nou ahead of Barcelona’s first LaLiga there since Spanish football came to a sudden halt with the coronavirus outbreak over three months ago.

The Catalan club said a local company cleaned the changing rooms, the press room, the mixed zone corridors, the pitch, the managers’ benches and the designated areas of the stands where substitute players will sit in an arrangement in line with strict social distancing rules.

Tonight’s guests are Leganes, a team desperate for points following a 1-2 home defeat to Valladolid that kept the team from the outskirts of Madrid second from bottom in the table.

“For Leganes it is one of their last chances to win points and try to avoid the drop,” Barcelona’s manager, Quique Setien, told a pre-match press conference.

“But also for us it is a really important game, because we want to try to keep the gap with our next rival.”

Breezing passed a struggling Real Mallorca with a 4-0 away win in the Balearic Islands on Saturday, Barcelona are top of LaLiga with a two-point margin over arch-rivals Real Madrid.

Aside from Jordi Alba, who is ruled out with a suspension, Setien can count on the same team sheet as their last outing, including goalscorers Lionel Messi, Martin Braithwaite and Arturo Vidal.

But the fixture list in Spain, rescheduled to clear the backlog of matches caused by the hiatus, is frantic. Barcelona have 10 games of the “11 finals” — as it has been billed by several players — yet to play with testing encounters against Sevilla and Atletico Madrid still to come before the extraordinary season wraps up in mid-July.

Real Madrid, on the other hand, return to action on Thursday evening when they play host to Valencia, a team desperate to keep their European ambitions alive.

Another side with European ambitions is Getafe, who, having lost to Granada in their first game back, host bottom of the league Espanyol later on Tuesday, a match that kicks off simultaneously to Villearal’s date with Mallorca.

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