{"id":1418,"date":"2014-02-05T16:11:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T16:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=1418"},"modified":"2014-02-05T16:57:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T16:57:39","slug":"dont-rule-us-out-martino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/dont-rule-us-out-martino\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8221;Don&#8217;t Rule Us Out&#8221; Martino"},"content":{"rendered":"<p itemprop=\"description\">Barcelona hope to put their La Liga difficulties to one side in the Copa del Rey semi-final first-leg against Real Sociedad on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>They lost 2-3\u00a0on Saturday &#8211; their first defeat in two months &#8211; as Atletico Madrid went top of the league following their 4-0 win over Sociedad.<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona coach Gerardo Martino says &#8221;Forty-five minutes of bad play is not enough to rule out Barca\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is true that crises always have a beginning so it is up to us to cut it short,&#8221; coach Gerardo Martino said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have it within our power to ensure this does not go any further.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Club captain Carles Puyol, along with defender Martin Montoya, winger Ibrahim Afellay and forward Isaac Cuenca, are named in his 22-man squad after missing the Valencia game.<\/p>\n<p>Brazil forward Neymar returned to training on Monday for the first time since injuring his ankle last month, but is still not expected to play for another two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barcelona hope to put their La Liga difficulties to one side in the Copa del Rey semi-final first-leg against Real Sociedad on Wednesday. They lost 2-3\u00a0on Saturday &#8211; their first defeat in two months &#8211; as Atletico Madrid went top of the league following their 4-0 win over Sociedad. Barcelona coach Gerardo Martino says &#8221;Forty-five [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,81],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1420,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions\/1420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}