“The likes of Messi, Neymar and Suarez have goals in them so for us we needed to defend well, but obviously we didn’t and we needed to work on the counter”. “Of course it’s never nice professionally”.
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He said: “I think credit to the goalkeeper”.
“They couldn’t have come to a more hard place in world football after the highly intense game [Rangers in the Old Firm] at the weekend and to have hardly any preparation time against the world’s best at keeping the ball; they beat you up with the football at times”.
The final result was Celtic’s worst ever defeat in European competition, but Rodgers maintains there was nothing to be embarrassed about.
The Spanish champions were fined 150,000 euros ($170,000) by UEFA for the presence of the flags during last season’s competition, 50,000 euros of which was suspended for two years.
“Moussa is happy to accept the responsibility and the keeper read it”.
“Whenever you lose as a professional with so many goals it is tough to take, but these players have been brilliant since I came to the club”.
“There was a massive moment in the first half”.
“When you start so badly against a team of that quality, if you have no experience, if you are too young, you can be caught”.
Neymar has said the nearly telepathic understanding between him, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez is the reason for their devastating relationship on the field for Barcelona.
“But we need to defend better from the front middle and back, be more compact and fearless on the ball and even here we usually do better than that”.
“We practically didn’t commit any mistakes”, he added. We can still get better though, our communication and understanding of each other is improving all the time.
Barca boss Luis Enrique thought the margin of his team’s victory was exaggerated, but after having some luck with the penalty save, he was looking for perfection from his side.
“Luckily we have a lot of games in this tournament to bounce back”.
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Neymar used a clever, no-look pass to play Messi clear on the left side of the area.
