Soccer News Soccer Match Reports, Football News
Following a disheartening 2-4 loss against Girona on the weekend, Barcelona will shift their attention to the Champions League as they take on Royal Antwerp in Belgium.
Xavi has a monumental task on his hands to regroup the players and get them ready for the second half of the season after falling five points behind Real Madrid, and seven behind Girona.
The journey to the top starts tomorrow, and ahead of the game, Xavi spoke to the media as part of his pre-game press conference.
“We focus on controlling the players and extricating ourselves from what we cannot control. Many of my assistants are from Barcelona and used to play football. Since we were in Qatar, I’d told them to prepare themselves because the challenge is very big,” he started.
“You will feel very tired but this is Barcelona. We focus on what we can control, we do our best as professionals and employees.”
He spoke about the Girona loss, of course, saying, “There is criticism from outside the dressing room and behind closed doors. They are angry because it is a match we controlled and played better than Girona. It was similar to the Madrid game.”
“The dressing room is angry and eager to respond. We have done this several times and we want to respond tomorrow. It is an important match even though we have qualified [to the RO16].”
The press asked Xavi about his statements claiming that Barcelona are still in the phase of rebuild, and what he meant by it.
“What I want to say is that we have to improve. We are in the process of rebuilding because we have been competing in the Europa League for two years. This is Barcelona. I don’t ask for time. I’m talking about construction in terms of the game. We are halfway to making Barcelona great.”
Barcelona had released their squad for the game ahead of their game, leaving behind Ilkay Gundogan, Robert Lewandowski, Ronald Araujo, and Frenkie de Jong.
However, they released an update to the squad today, where Gundogan, Lewandowski,…
Source link : https://barcauniversal.com/xavi-talks-gundogan-lewandowski-araujo-girona-loss-van-bommel-ahead-of-royal-antwerp-vs-barcelona/
Author : Udhav Arora
Publish date : 2023-12-12 18:40:48
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
