Barcelona to head to Beijing for Olympic countdown

Barcelona's Andres Iniesta (L) is congratulated by Samuel Eto'o after scoring a goal (L) against Athletic Bilbao during their Spanish League match at the Nou Camp in Barcelona, 25 February. Spanish champions Barcelona will play a friendly match in Beijing in August as part of festivities marking the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games, a Beijing sports official said on Wednesday.

Spanish champions Barcelona will play a friendly match in Beijing in August as part of festivities marking the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games, a Beijing sports official said on Wednesday.

Barcelona will meet Chinese Super league club Beijing Guoan at the Beijing Workers Stadium on either August 3 or 5, Sun Kanglin, director of the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau told a press conference.

"Barcelona see this as a big chance to present themselves to the Chinese market and are bringing all their top stars including Ronaldinho," Sun said.

The Olympics begins on August 8, 2008 and Beijing sports officials are planning a series of events to highlight the one-year countdown including a table tennis tournament featuring 10,000 players in Tiananmen Square.

Though rivals Real Madrid have twice visited China, Barcelona are making their maiden trip to the country, Sun said.

"I was in Barcelona last week and we signed an agreement for the match on August 3 or 5," he said. "It has been confirmed."

Other events marking the countdown include the so-called "China Bowl," an American National Football League pre-season exhibition game featuring the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks scheduled for August 8 at the Workers Stadium.

Sun said he had submitted plans to hold the table tennis competition on August 8 on Tiananmen Square to the local planning authorities who had yet to reply.

"We are in the preparation stage and we hope we get approval," he said.

Every district of the city will be invited to hold preliminary tournaments to select the 10,000 entrants for the open-air spectacle, according to Sun.

Tiananmen, at the southern end of Beijing's celebrated Forbidden City, is the biggest city square in the world, measuring 440,000 square metres (4.3 million square feet).

The square is best known as the site of pro-democracy rallies in 1989 that led to the June 3-4 Tiananmen massacre, when Chinese troops killed hundreds and possibly thousands of protesters.