Lionel Messi to miss Barcelona's La Liga season opener with calf injury

Barcelona's opening La Liga match of the season against Athletic Bilbao will be played today without Lionel Messi who is yet to recover from a calf injury he sustained in his first pre-season training session. Due to the injury, Messi was forced to miss out on Barcelona's pre-season tour of the USA.

Messi started solo training on Thursday but is yet to return to first-team training. In a press conference yesterday, Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde revealed Messi will not be risked during the club's La Liga opener. He explained, "We never like to risk any players and much less someone like Leo.

“He still hasn’t returned to training with the team and while we are happy with his progress, individual training is very different to playing a match. We are going to wait and see.”

The Barcelona tactician avoided going deep into the Neymar transfer saga when questioned by reporters.

“It’s inconvenient and it’s not logical. The normal thing would be that the team you start with is the same one that will compete for the whole season,” he bantered.

“Now we have two weeks until the transfer window shuts and you can’t breathe easily until then. I’m very happy with the squad I have at the moment but I don’t know what will happen next.

“I am far removed from transfers and I’m focusing on the players I have for our first game. Neymar belongs to PSG and we’ll see what happens but I can’t say anything more about him.”

Barcelona travel to San Mames to face Athletico Bilbao this evening.

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