“Barcelona have done it to much better teams than us. Against that, rivals can do very little”, Barcelona coach Luis Enrique said.
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The 7-0 victory surpassed Barcelona’s biggest win in the Champions League to date, a 7-1 defeat of Bayer Lever- kusen in 2012.
The Barcelona superstar scored three goals within the first hour against Scottish champions Celtic to bag his sixth career hat-trick in the competition.
“Messi’s the best player in the world, at whatever position he plays”, he said, according to the club’s official website. “It wouldn’t be clever to curtail that, to put limits on him”, the Barcelona boss was quoted as saying by goal.com. “Not just because of his numbers, but for his vision of the game”.
“It is tough when you lose so many goals”, he said.
Suarez and Messi started Saturday’s shock defeat to Alaves on the bench, while Neymar missed the start of the season due to his participation in the Olympics, where he fired Brazil to a first ever Gold medal in soccer.
“We are not playing for ourselves, nobody is looking for personal glory”. Messi did the rest by sizing up Dorus de Vries before blasting a left-footed shot past the Celtic keeper.
Arsenal’s night got better with news that Group A’s other game between Basel and Ludogorets also ended 1-1.
“It is hard to say anything about him (Messi) which hasn’t been said”.
“Very rarely can any team have experienced such a swing from being masters of their local universe – as Celtic were after their frolic in the Old Firm derby – to a side chasing shadows vainly for most of this non-contest”, says Roddy Forsyth of the Daily Telegraph. “(Barcelona) is the world’s best at keeping the ball”.
The Hoops were losing 2-0 at the interval through a Lionel Messi double, but Moussa Dembele had a penalty saved by Marc-Andre ter Stegen when it was 1-0 for the home side.
Goal No. 3 came in the 50th when Neymar curled a free kick over the wall.
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“We didn’t do well enough on the ball, they kept giving it back and they are entitled to score, they are a great team”.
