Predicted Starting Line-Up: FC Barcelona vs Manchester City (Pre-Season Friendly) | OneFootball

Manchester City continue their preparations for the new season with a friendly clash against FC Barcelona at the Camping World Stadium in Florida.

Pep Guardiola’s side face the La Liga heavyweights in their penultimate pre-season fixture, with Manchester City having two remaining matches in the United States, before returning to the United Kingdom ahead of the FA Community Shield at Wembley Stadium next month.

Manchester City are currently winless in pre-season, after the Sky Blues suffered successive defeats to Celtic and AC Milan, losing 3-4 at the Kenan Memorial Stadium and 2-3 at the Yankee Stadium in New York.

The Blues’ US tour consists of four matches, and both Erling Haaland and James McAtee were on the scoresheet during the weekend defeat to AC Milan, after Marco Nasti scored a 78th minute winner for the Italian side.

Tuesday’s clash with Barcelona in Orlando will be Barcelona’s first match of pre-season, with the Spanish club scheduled to also play Real Madrid and AC Milan as part of a three-match tour of the US this summer.

Manchester City will conclude their pre-season with a clash against Chelsea next weekend, with the Cityzens also facing the west London club at Stamford Bridge on the opening weekend of the Premier League season next month.

No additional first-team players have joined the Manchester City squad ahead of the Barcelona fixture, so here is how we predict Manchester City will line-up on Tuesday night.

Predicted XI

Debate surrounding Manchester City’s first-choice goalkeeper for the new season continues to rumble on, however we expect to see Stefan Ortega start the pre-season clash against Barcelona, following Ederson’s outing from the first whistle against AC Milan in New York.

We predict that the German goalkeeper will have a centre-back pairing of Kalvin Phillips and Josko Gvardiol ahead of him, with Manchester City training the aforementioned Englishman in the new role during training this week.

Also spotted in open training was a full-back combination of Rico Lewis at right-back, and fellow Academy graduate Josh Wilson-Esbrand on the other side, with a double-pivot lining up ahead of the back-four.

Nico O’Reilly could act as part of the defensive midfield shield in front of Phillips and Gvardiol, whilst training ground preparations also saw Mateo Kovacic operating in the deep-lying midfield role alongside the Academy starlet.

James McAtee could once again feature in this one and take up duties as the most advanced of the midfield trio, operating close to Erling Haaland and making late runs into the Barcelona penalty area.

In the attacking trio, Erling Haaland will have the opportunity to continue his pre-season goalscoring streak with a third consecutive start, whilst Oscar Bobb and Jack Grealish are also expected to line-up either side of the striker.

Starting XI: Ortega; Lewis, Phillips, Gvardiol, Wilson-Esbrand; O’Reilly, Kovacic, McAtee; Bobb, Haaland, Grealish.

Substitutes: Ederson, Carson, Susoho, Katongo, Mfuni, Mbete, Simpson-Pusey, Doyle, Galvez, Oboavwoduo, Wright, Perrone, Ndala, Hamilton, Samuel, Knight, Heskey, Fatah.