Barcelona open Johan Cruyff Stadium with Under 19 clash against Ajax

Barcelona officially opened the new Johan Cruyff Stadium, which will host games for Barca B and their women’s teams, with a fitting Under-19 friendly clash between the Spanish giants and Dutch power Ajax.  

The new 6,000-seater stadium – located at the club’s training ground in the suburbs of the city – pays tribute to the legendary Cruyff, who played for the Blaugrana between 1973 and 1978 before coaching them between 1988 and 1996. 

Cruyff died in 2016 and is widely credited with laying the foundations for the unprecedented success the club has enjoyed over the past 15 years.  

Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique and Sergio Busquets were among the Barca stars in attendance at the opening, which saw the two clubs Cruyff is widely associated with facing off at the youth level.  

Club captain Messi, along with Busquets, Pique and Sergi Roberto, stood in the centre circle prior to Tuesday’s match as Cruyff’s son, Jordi, took a ceremonial kickoff to officially open the stadium.  

Cruyff’s wife Danny and his daughter Susila were also in attendance as the club paid tribute to one of their legendary figures and his family.  

The match saw 16-year-old Naci Unuvar of Ajax bag a clinical brace as the visitors claimed a 2-0 win.  

The opening followed on from Monday’s unveiling of a Cruyff statue outside Camp Nou, with the event also seeing members of Cruyff’s family in attendance.  

Messi, Busquets and Pique watch on from the centre circle as Jordi Cruyff takes a ‘ceremonial’ kick off to open the stadium named after his father pic.twitter.com/kU5iXHBpTL

— Samuel Marsden (@samuelmarsden) August 27, 2019

The stadium represents the first finished piece of the Espai Barca, a project aimed at transforming and integrating FC Barcelona facilities. 

The project will also see a redesign of Camp Nou, and the creation of a club campus, which will see the Spanish outfit remove architectural barriers and introduce measures to improve urban mobility around the stadium. 

The new stadium makes the former home ground of Barcelona B and the women’s team obsolete, with the ground the Miniestadi now sits on to be used as the home of the club’s new home for its indoor sports teams, which include basketball, handball, roller hockey and futsal.