Forty-Seven Years On, Forest and Barcelona Meet Again — This Time Under Italian Floodlights

When would two clubs separated by an ocean of trophies and reputation last have any reason to cross paths at all? For Nottingham Forest and Barcelona, the answer sits in 1979, when Brian Clough’s European champions beat the Catalans over two legs to lift the UEFA Super Cup. Nobody at the City Ground that autumn could have guessed it would take until a sweltering August night in Udine, Italy, for a rematch to materialize — and even then, only as the middle leg of a three-way pre-season experiment nobody had tried before.

That experiment is the Friuli Venezia Giulia Cup, hosted by Udinese at the Bluenergy Stadium, a triangular tournament built from three 45-minute matches rather than the usual ninety. Forest open the night against the home side before turning around to face Barcelona in the second slot, with Udinese and the Catalans closing things out. A draw after 45 minutes goes to penalties, with three points for a win, two for a shootout victory and one for the defeated side in the shootout — a scoring quirk that gives even a truncated friendly a competitive shape.

Context matters more than usual here. Oliver Glasner is six weeks into life as Forest head coach, arriving from Crystal Palace with silverware in his suitcase and a mandate to bring order to a club that churned through four managers last season before somehow stumbling into a Europa League semi-final. He has been open about wanting his squad to adjust to his way of working, and a 3-4-2-1 shape has already begun replacing whatever system came before it. Barcelona, by contrast, arrive as champions with almost nothing to prove domestically and everything to manage physically — Hansi Flick’s group is missing the core of the World Cup-winning Spain contingent, who remain on extended rest, leaving a squad heavy on academy graduates and squad players to carry the Catalan badge in Italy.

Neither manager needs the scoreline. What both need is information: who is sharp, who is short of fitness, and who is ready to be trusted when matches start counting again. Forest’s season begins on August 22 away at Brentford; Barcelona’s La Liga defense opens a day later. Udine, then, is less a spectacle than a diagnostic — and that is precisely what makes it worth watching closely.

🚑 Treatment Room Notes: Who’s Missing in Udine

Barcelona’s absentee list is mercifully short but significant. Frenkie de Jong tore the medial collateral ligament in his right knee during the World Cup and is expected to be sidelined for around four months, ruling him out not just of this tournament but of the start of the league season entirely. Beyond that single case, Flick’s non-selections in Italy are rest-related rather than medical, with the World Cup contingent given extended time off rather than being unavailable through injury.

Forest’s situation is more complicated, a product of a squad still absorbing knocks from the tail end of last season and a pre-season training camp in Portugal that was not entirely clean. Murillo has been with the group throughout the summer but has not shaken a thigh problem, and Nicolo Savona remains short of full training. Omari Hutchinson picked up what the club hopes is a minor issue in Portugal and is considered unlikely to feature this weekend. Callum Hudson-Odoi, meanwhile, is far enough into his recovery from a lengthy muscle injury that a short cameo in Udine is being discussed, even if his primary target remains the Premier League opener.

📋 Who Takes the Field: Named Sides for the Bluenergy Stadium

Barcelona’s XI was announced first, and it carries a distinctly homegrown flavor. Fermín López starts in the number 10 role having fully recovered from his foot injury and trained normally all week, while Raphinha returns to action having put his World Cup knock behind him. The headline, though, belongs to Karim Adeyemi, handed back-to-back starts since his arrival from Borussia Dortmund, lining up alongside teenage forward Hamza Abdelkarim, who scored twice in the last outing against Birmingham City.

Forest’s team news had not been formally confirmed by kickoff, but reporting from the camp in Udine converges on a settled back three behind a double pivot of Morgan Dominguez and Morgan Gibbs-White, with the latter coming off a 15-goal Premier League campaign and expected to keep dictating tempo from just off the front line. Igor Jesus, signed to give the attack a physical focal point, is projected to lead the line.

Note: Forest’s line-up above reflects the projection converging across multiple pre-match reports; the club had not published an official graphic at the time of writing, unlike Barcelona, whose XI was confirmed via the club’s own channels roughly an hour before kickoff.

Two Rebuilds, One Stage

What makes this friendly worth more than a glance is how differently each club is using it. Glasner has already shown he prizes conditioning over cosmetics, making zero substitutions in an earlier closed-doors friendly purely to stress-test fitness, and Udine offers him three separate 45-minute windows to keep doing exactly that. Barcelona’s calculus is almost the opposite: with so many first-choice players still resting after international summer duty, Flick is using the tournament to give fringe and academy players a competitive audition against unfamiliar opposition, all while managing the returning fitness of players like Raphinha and Fermín López without rushing them.

• First meeting between the clubs since the 1979 UEFA Super Cup, which Forest won.
• Format: three 45-minute matches in a round-robin triangular, with penalty shootouts breaking any draw.
• Forest open their Premier League campaign on August 22; Barcelona begin their La Liga title defense on August 23.
• Glasner has not lost since taking charge of pre-season fixtures against Notts County, Blackburn Rovers and Portimonense.
• Barcelona’s only pre-season defeat so far came on penalties against Birmingham City.

Neither side needs Udine to go a particular way, but both need it to go somewhere useful — Glasner needs proof his fitness principles are sinking in before matches carry real weight, and Flick needs his squad players sharp enough that the gap between the World Cup contingent and everyone else does not show when the biggest names finally return. That tension, more than any scoreline, is what will be worth watching once the ball is kicked at the Bluenergy Stadium.

Watch Barcelona vs Nottingham Forest full match replay and highlights, At Saturday, August 08, 2026. as Friendly.