Barcelona’s Pre-Season Debut Belongs to Teen Abdelkarim Despite Birmingham Defeat

FC Barcelona began their pre-season programme with a penalty shootout defeat to Championship side Birmingham City at St. Andrew’s on July 31, going down 3-2 on spot-kicks after the two sides could not be separated at 2-2 following 90 minutes. The result will not trouble Hansi Flick unduly – this was the Blaugrana’s first official pre-season test, with a significant portion of senior players still absent following their World Cup exertions – but the performance offered some clear talking points, most of them centred on 18-year-old Hamza Abdelkarim.

Abdelkarim, who had arrived at this pre-season having made four appearances for Egypt at the 2026 World Cup, scored twice on his Barcelona debut, with both goals coming from open play and the penalty spot respectively. His first arrived from the spot after he drew a foul from Christoph Klarer, cancelling out August Priske’s 31^st-minute opener – a towering header from Alex Cochrane’s whipped cross that Priske glanced over Jofre Torrents. Abdelkarim then reacted quickest on the hour when James Beadle parried a Roony Bardghji strike, poking in to give the Catalans the lead. The statistics underlined his contribution further: he converted both of his shots and led the Barça side in duels won, winning seven of fifteen contested.

The lead lasted eight minutes. Klarer won a headed flick-on from a long free-kick and Jhon Solis converted first time past substitute goalkeeper Aron Yaakobishvili to level at 2-2. Birmingham nearly won it in regulation – Cochrane’s half-volley crashed off the crossbar in the 73^rd minute – before Beadle produced a double stop in stoppage time to deny Bardghji and Alex Gonzalez. In the shootout, Beadle saved from both Bardghji and Brian Farinas, with Farinas missing the decisive kick to settle the contest in Birmingham’s favour.

Karim Adeyemi also caught the eye on his own debut, running at the Birmingham backline with persistence throughout the first half, while Shane Kluivert saw the game’s first chance deflected wide. Andreas Christensen tested Birmingham with a long-range effort that cleared the left post just before the half-hour mark, and Wojciech Szczesny made a key save from Tomoki Iwata’s header on the stroke of half-time to keep Barça level at the break. Birmingham’s xG of 1.16 to Barça’s 1.88 tells one version of the story; the set-piece vulnerability – 1.01 of Birmingham’s xG came from dead-ball situations, with Klarer and Phil Neumann particularly dangerous – tells another.

The match was watched by Jude Bellingham, attending in a Birmingham shirt at the ground where he began his career before joining Real Madrid. His presence added a degree of colour to what was otherwise a workmanlike pre-season opener, but the broader significance of the afternoon belongs to Abdelkarim. With Ferran Torres and others yet to return, the academy players called into this pre-season group had a genuine opportunity to make an impression on Flick, and Abdelkarim took his with both hands. How Flick uses him across the remaining pre-season fixtures will indicate whether this performance translates into a formal role in the first-team picture for 2026-27.