Cruijff on Rijkaard and Van Basten

In an interview with the Catalan television station TV3, Barcelona legend Johan Cruijff gave this weekend his opinion about the manager debate.

Cruijff didn't want to enter the discussion if Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard (45) had to leave or not, although he praised the current manager for his achievements: "Rijkaard has brought fantastic results and Barcelona has regained the sympathy of the world of football. He turned the club again into an institution of good football."

In case Rijkaard in the end would have to go, Cruijff thinks his succesor could well be Dutch national team coach Marco Van Basten (43). Cruijff says Van Basten combines quality play and results. Because he played for big teams, he also wouldn't be impressed by the fact of having to lead such a team.

Crosas goes French / 4

On Sunday, Barcelona loan out Marc Crosas (20) played a game with Olympique Lyon's reserve team. Following two yellow cards, the player had to leave the field in the second half.

Sevilla's end-of-season sales

In an interview with Spanish financial newspaper Expansión, Sevilla president José María Del Nido has said last week that his club will have to sell if they aren't able to qualify for next season's Champions League: "Twenty per cent of our budget depends on the Champions League. If we cannot qualify, we'll have to sell assests, meaning players, to compensate the money we don't receive."

With still fourteen games to go, Sevilla is currently 6th in the Spanish league, 5 points behind the last Champions League spot. Since Barcelona is rumoured to be interested in players like Dani Alves, Christian Poulsen or even Luis Fabiano, some Catalans probably wouldn't mind Sevila not entering the Liga top four this season...

Transfer history: Rijkaard, Ronaldinho and Deco

Catalan sports paper El Mundo Deportivo claimed last week that the Barcelona board was last summer on the verge of making a radical change to the team and is now regretting not having done so.

Manager Frank Rijkaard (45) was close to being dismissed but ultimately he got the confidence of the board to stay on for one more year, on the condition that he would ask more from his players. In the end it then was Rijkaard who stopped the sale, favoured by a lot of board members, of Ronaldinho (27) and Deco (30).

Garay's price tag

Catalan sports paper Sport yesterday claimed the deal with Racing Santander over central defender Ezequiel Garay (21) has now been fully closed. Barcelona would pay 18 million euro for the Argentinian player.