Six Degrees of Separation: FC Barcelona-Manchester City

You may have heard of the popular concept that everyone one in the world is connected by a maximum of six steps. Here at fcbarcelona.com we are intrigued by the idea and we thought it would be interesting to try and link members of the current Barça Champions League squad and the current Manchester City Champions League squad in six steps or less.

Just as in football, however, there needs to be rules to maintain order and stop us descending into anarchy. So here they are:

1. A connection between players is made when they have been at the same team (club or national team) at the same time. e.g. Joe Hart (City) played for Birmingham City in 2009/10 with Spanish midfielder Míchel.

2. Direct connections between current players from both squads are not allowed e.g. you cannot link Claudio Bravo with Dani Alves because they both currently play for Barça, or Pablo Zabaleta and Leo Messi because one currently plays for Manchester City and the other for Barça.

3. Connections can only be made between players (active or retired), not coaches, managers etc

4. In the days running up to the second leg between the two clubs we will give you the names of a Barça player and a Manchester City player and you have to try and connect those two players via six other players or less and post your solution on twitter using the hashtag #6degreesFCB

5. There is no one ‘correct’ solution. There are an infinite number of ways to connect two players and as long as you take into account rules 1-4, then you’re answer will be valid.

Example to get you started

To help you on your way we have prepared an example for you right here.

To connect Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart and Barça keeper Claudio Bravo:

Joe Hart (City) played for Birmingham City in 2009/10 with Spanish midfielder Míchel, who played at Getafe in 2011/12 with Pedro León, who played for Real Madrid in 2010/11 with Mesüt Özil, who currently plays for Arsenal with Alexis Sánchez, who plays for the current Chile national side with Claudio Bravo.

Here there are four degrees of separation between Joe Hart and Bravo (Míchel, Pedro Léon, Ózil and Alexis Sánchez)

Not impressed? See if you can do better.

We will challenge you with more players to connect via the club’s social media channels in the next few days and the most interesting and unusual solutions will be published on the Club’s social channels on the day of the game.