Barcelona broke the deadlock with four minutes of the first half remaining through Rakitic, who latched onto Andres Iniesta’s deep left-wing cross to glance a header past Oblak and into the bottom right corner from 10 yards.
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A statement on Barcelona’s website said the Argentina global would miss the league games against Sporting Gijon and Celta Vigo and the Champions League clash against Borussia Monchengladbach.
“He plays every match”, Bauza, who said his team would nevertheless cope, told Fox Sports.
LUIS ENRIQUE, Barcelona manager, on Lionel Messi’s injury absence.
Enrique admitted it would be “difficult to protect” Messi with the games coming thick and fast for Barcelona and with Argentina no doubt desperate to have him involved in next month’s World Cup qualifiers. The Argentina coach also doubts if Messi will be fit enough to play in his country’s World Cup Qualifying match against Peru and Paraguay.
Messi limped off just before the hour mark of the Spanish champions’ 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid on Wednesday.
Argentina boss Edgardo Bauza has attempted to clarify comments made over Lionel Messi’s treatment at Barcelona, saying he does not want to fight with the club over the player.
Barcelona led 1-0 when Messi was replaced by Arda Turan in the second half of their 1-1 La Liga draw with Atletico Madrid on Wednesday.
“We can not and we do not want to intervene with Barcelona’s plans, and we understand that the club needs to be able to count on the player”. No more scoring, so Zinedine Zidane’s 16-game win streak is over. Messi is expected to miss all of them.
From then on Real dominated proceedings as they searched for a victor, but despite chances falling the way of Gareth Bale, Ronaldo and Alvaro Morata, the European champions failed to break down Villarreal.
“We had a good first half, without creating many chances”.
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A knee injury kept Messi out for two months last season but Luis Suarez and Neymar picked up the slack for the Catalan giants, scoring 20 of Barca’s 23 goals.
