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Barcelona's Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba and Jeremy Mathieu resume training

Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba and Jeremy Mathieu all trained on Wednesday, handing Barcelona coach Luis Enrique some good news ahead of Saturday's La Liga game against Malaga at Camp Nou.

Centre-back Pique has been missing since spraining his ankle in the Champions League win against Manchester City in October, but stepped up his recovery work last week.

He missed the league games against Valencia, Granada and Sevilla and was also absent for the defeat in the return game against City at the Etihad Stadium earlier this month.

Julen Lopetegui also opted to leave him out of the Spain squad for the games against Macedonia and England.

Alba, too, has been missing since that win over Pep Guardiola's side on Oct. 19.

The left-back suffered a recurrence of a hamstring injury but has now returned to training and, like Pique, will be available for Malaga's visit this weekend.

Mathieu injured his calf in the Catalan Super Cup defeat to Espanyol at the end of October and was initially ruled out for three weeks.

That time has now passed and the Frenchman will come into contention for Saturday's game given the absence of Samuel Umtiti.

Umtiti injured his hamstring while on international duty with France and will be sidelined for three weeks, with the Clasico against Real Madrid at the beginning of December pencilled in as his first game back.

Barca's fourth central defender, Javier Mascherano, meanwhile, has been in South America this week, where he's played in World Cup qualifiers against Brazil and Colombia with Argentina.

Luis Enrique likes to go easy on his players when they return from trips across the globe, but given the absence of Umtiti and the fact Pique and Mathieu are both returning from injuries, he may be forced to play Mascherano from the off.

As for Alba, his involvement is not so pressing given he has a natural replacement in Lucas Digne, who has started Barca's last four games.

Elsewhere, captain Andres Iniesta remains out of action for the foreseeable future with knee ligament damage and Luis Suarez will serve a one-match ban this weekend after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season against Sevilla.

A win against Malaga could see the Blaugrana move to the top of La Liga if Real Madrid drop points against Atletico Madrid at the Vicente Calderon.