Celtic coach Brendan Rodgers hailed his former Liverpool charge Luis Suarez as “the greatest striker in the world” on the eve of Tuesday’s Champions League Group C tie in Barcelona.
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“As a footballer, I think he’s the best in the world”.
Suarez is overshadowed by Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in La Liga, but he scored more goals than either in all competitions last season (59) and the stats suggest he deserves to be considered on a similar level. The biggest compliment that you could give Luis is that he came to an already world-class team and he made them better.
“What you have to try to do is negate that and be as aggressive as you can in order to stop him – and that’s something that we will try to do”. “Barca now wouldn’t be the same team without Luis in the team”.
“It can be positive, but also you can waken up a team with a result like that”, added Rodgers.
“I know working with Luis that Luis on his own could occupy a back four defence.So if you add Neymar and Messi into that then of course it is a very hard task, but as a manager you have to believe you can get a positive result”.
Enrique was in the firing line after leaving Messi and Suarez on the bench among seven changes for the Alaves clash. “They are obviously annoyed because we don’t like and are not accustomed to losing at home”, said Enrique. We understand and respect the difficulties there is to get a result here, coming off the back of the intensity of the programme we have been on and the Rangers game at the weekend and everything that we put into it to get the result.
Celtic beat Barcelona, the previous season’s Champions League winners, 2-1 at Celtic Park through goals from Victor Wanyama and Tony Watt.
“That’s why we play football for nights like tomorrow night”. However, Enrique expects a very different clash with Champions League points at stake.
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And Iniesta insisted Barca will have licked their wounds and learned the lesson in time for the visit of the Scottish champions. It is the Champions League, we want to win, but we will have to be at our best because we play another champion. They did not cause us much danger but they were effective. This term his development has continued and he has been recognised as a key player under Brendan Rodgers. Dutch stopper Jasper Cillessen made his debut on Saturday, but Marc-Andre ter Stegen trained fully on Monday and could make an earlier than expected return from a hamstring injury.
