Barcelona’s interim coach, Sergi Barjuan, explained that “we have to recover the players physically and morally” after drawing 1-1 at the Camp Nou against Alavés and three days before facing Dinamo Kiev in a key match for stay alive in the Champions League.
«It is the players who have to take him out, we can only help them. I am optimistic and hardworking and nobody is going to beat me to that. Now I have to win over them, they have to believe in themselves “, argued Barjuan at a press conference.
The Barça coach admitted that “the feeling is bitter”, but that his team did everything they had “worked for.” “By recovering the ball we have been more vertical, we have generated intensity and we have moved the ball judiciously,” he said.
Despite this, he admitted that during the first half “it was difficult for the two insiders (Nico González and Gavi) to play between the lines, they were poorly positioned and receiving from behind.”
He also regretted the goal he received: «We had worked to control Luis Rioja and Joselu, but in an unfortunate play they scored us when we were better. In that play you have to be more aggressive and make a foul even if it costs you a card ».
Asked about the multiple casualties that the team has, to which those of Gerard Piqué and Sergio Agüero for Kiev can be added, Barjuan did not want to use it as an excuse. “It is what there is, I have not found it alone, Koeman also found it, but for that there is the bench and the subsidiary,” he explained.
The Argentine forward left the field visibly dizzy, but Barjuan did not delve into the reason. «I asked him and he told me that he was a little dizzy. Now they have taken him to the hospital to see what he has, “he just said. EFE (HN)