FC Barcelona will be looking to kick-off their pre-season campaign in style tomorrow, as they travel to Dublin to take Scottish champions, Celtic FC at the Aviva Stadium. The match will be the Blaugrana’s opening fixture in the 2016 International Champions Cup, a curious competition that has certainly struggled to endear itself to football fans across the globe since its inception.
Fundamentally, the premise of the competition itself is a lie. While titles are technically handed out to three participating teams, they are awarded somewhat arbitrarily based on the team’s performance in friendlies in a particular region – meaning that there is no one true winner of the Cup.