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Thomas Vermaelen is looking forward to the start of the season and his eager to prove himself at Barcelona in the upcoming campaign, after enduring a disappointing debut season at the Camp Nou. The centre-back barely featured for the Catalan club last season and has admitted that the previous year was the lowest point in his career.
The 29-year-old was purchased from Arsenal last summer for £15 million, but suffered from a couple of serious injuries that only saw him make his league debut in Barcelona’s final game of the season. The Belgian international failed to recover from a hamstring strain that he picked up during the 2014 World Cup, and sustained a serious thigh injury just when he looked like making a comeback.
Vermaelen was forced to watch his team-mates pick up the Copa del Rey, La Liga and the Champions League from the sidelines and despite collecting the winners medals, he accepted that his contribution to the treble was a scarce one.
Speaking to Press Association Sport after starting Barcelona’s 3-1 defeat to Manchester United in the International Champions Cup, the former Arsenal centre-back spoke about his ‘terrible’ campaign.
"I got a medal, but you don't feel like you have won the Treble. I was very happy for the team, but it's not like I contributed a lot for the cups we won." Vermaelen said, according to ESPN.
Vermaelen was also optimistic about maintaining his fitness in the build-up to the new season, after playing the first two games of Barca’s pre-season tour of the United States.
"I am very happy and very pleased to be back," he said.
"There's nothing better than to feel fit. Last year was terrible. It was a nasty injury, a very difficult one and I am very happy that the feeling in the legs is perfect again, like it should be. I feel 100 percent now. We just started preseason so I am adapting still but I had 60 minutes against a good opponent so I am very pleased with that."
Vermaelen knows that his place in the starting line-up isn’t assured despite his return to fitness, with Gerrard Pique, Javier Mascherano, Jeremy Mathieu and Marc Bartra also competing for the two centre-back spots in Luis Enrique’s team. He didn’t seem disconcerted about the competition for places, adding:
"In a club like this there's loads of competition so that's normal.”
"We have a lot of great players. It's not easy but that's why you become a football player, to play for the best teams in the world and I am part of that."
