FORMER BARCELONA PLAYER SAYS MADRID PLAYED LIKE A SMALL TEAM
Barcelona legend, Xavi Hernandez, says his former rival club in Spain, Real Madrid, played “like a small team” in the El Classico against his former club.
The Spanish giant, Madrid defeated Barcelona by 2-1 in a keenly contested match as it was crucial to the La Liga title.
Madrid head coach, Zinedine Zidane, opted for a cautious approach as they came from behind to beat their arch-rivals at Camp Nou. The victory is one that helped reignite the La Liga title race and has made the title race one that will end in the final minutes of the season. With two games left this season, Madrid are in third place with 84 points, Atletico and Barcelona are a point ahead but the Catalan giant are atop due to goals’ difference.
However, Xavi believes that style – along with the tactics of Atletico Madrid – would not be accepted at Barca. He told beIN SPORTS:
“Real Madrid played like a small team in the Clasico at Camp Nou.
“A big team like Barcelona should not be playing like Atletico Madrid. Big teams like Barcelona and Madrid should always stick to their own style. You cannot start playing like Atletico. Read more “FORMER BARCELONA PLAYER SAYS MADRID PLAYED LIKE A SMALL TEAM”
Luis Enrique disappointed with his Team Players Performance
Barcelona coach Luis Enrique was disappointed to see his team not score many goals in the Champions League win over Atletico Madrid.
The Catalan club registered a 2-1 victory against their Spanish opponents, but the margin of victory could have been more had Barcelona taken advantage of being a man up for the last 30 minutes. The club conceded an early goal to Fernando Torres, who was then sent off for a second bookable offence. This gave the impetus for Barcelona to go on and win the match. Luis Suarez once again continued his impressive form by scoring twice.
Atletico will feel confident about getting a result in the return leg at the Vicente Calderon because they have secured a crucial away goal. For this reason, Enrique will see that a third goal would have given Barcelona some comfort going into the second leg. Still, many clubs would like to be in the position as the Catalan giants and this certainly applies for Real Madrid. Madrid suffered a 2-0 loss against Wolfsburg in their first leg of the Champions League game. For Barcelona, it was about recovering quickly from the El Clasico lost during the weekend and they achieved it in some style. Read more “Luis Enrique disappointed with his Team Players Performance”
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2016 is a new beginning for Barcelona
In the first season of Luis Enrique as the head coach of Barcelona, he managed to win the Champions League, Kings Cup and Spanish League. This is an amazing accomplishment for any coach and even more for someone who win the treble in only his first season in charge of a club.
There are many managers who haven’t been able to secure the treble even after having spent their entire careers in guiding a team and even after having done an impressive job in the hot seat of a club, it still isn’t enough for them to reach this historic achievement and now that the new year has kicked in, it’s the task of Luis Enrique and his players to defend what they reached in 2015.
The year of 2016 represents a new string of challenges for Barcelona as they have the task of defending and protecting all of the pieces of silverware that the Spanish outfit secured in the previous season but this new year also brings forth more opportunities for Barcelona to become an even more dominating force in the world of football.
Barcelona was not able to sign new players in the previous year due to a transfer ban which prevented them from adding performers into their main team but this ban has reached it’s end and it has now been confirmed that Barcelona has added 77 new players.
The Spanish team was not actually able to sign players in the previous year and what they opted to do in this period of time is that they accumulated the players. Aleix Vidal and ArdaTuran are the high profile players that were sealed in this time lapse, they couldnt immediately play for the first team of Barcelona but now that 2016 has kicked in, both of those new players will now be able to play alongside Lionel Messi and the rest of the squad.
The other remaining 75 players which have been accumulated in the transfer ban are expected to join the U-16 team academy as the majority of them are youth players. Some of them will be placed in the Barca B team, while others in a number of different academies of the younger teams. Read more “2016 is a new beginning for Barcelona”