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People eat, sleep and party in Spain later than anywhere else in Europe but even soccer fans were struggling to stay awake for a match between Barcelona and Sevilla that was not due to kick off until five past midnight.

Barcelona laid on a free picnic to try to persuade their supporters to stay up late to come the Nou Camp and staged a variety show to keep spirits up into the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Barcelona opted to stage a night of "football for insomniacs", as their website described it, after Sevilla refused their request to play on Tuesday.

Barca had hoped that up to five of their first-team regulars, due to join up with international squads on Tuesday, would be given the green light to play the game and report for duty a few hours late.

In the end, only Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma received authorisation but Barcelona still opted to go ahead with the late, late kickoff.

"I think the club was right to do it," one Barca fan told Spanish television. "Even if it got us just one extra player it was worth it."

But the decision met with fierce criticism from Sevilla.

"It's a complete farce," said Sevilla coach Joaquin Caparros. "It also creates a really dangerous precedent and now every team will want to change the time of a kickoff to suit their own interests."

For the rest of Spain's football community, the late kickoff was regarded as something of a joke.

"How are you going to expect your wife to believe that you are off to see the football at midnight," said Deportivo Coruna coach Javier Irureta. "She's just going to think you are cheating on her."

Barcelona would normally expect close to a 98,000 full house for their first home match of the season, especially with the added attraction of seeing new Brazilian signing Ronaldinho.

The crowd for Tuesday night's game was expected to be well below that but Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard called on fans to make a special effort to attend the game.

"The team needs the support of the fans, especially in the first home game," Rijkaard said. "Victory would give us a lot of confidence."

"The only important thing is that the players don't fall asleep on the pitch," he added with a wry smile.

The midnight kickoff certainly gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "dream team", a term that was used regularly used to describe the Barca side of a decade ago.

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