“But after that, they scored a second goal and, in the second half, we ran out of legs”.
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“This is one of those nights you have to take”.
Celtic striker Moussa Dembele, who had scored a hat-trick in the 5-1 win over Rangers at the weekend, had a penalty saved by Marc-Andre ter Stegen when the home side led by only one goal.
Messi struck a hat-trick, Suarez netted a brace and Neymar found the target with a stunning free-kick and the latter credits the friendship they share away from the pitch for helping them reap the rewards on it.
“We’ve beaten Barcelona and AC Milan before at home, so here’s hoping we can focus on that and try to get three points on the board as quickly as possible”.
“Professionally it is never nice when this happens”, said the manager.
“There can be no embarrassment because they do that to much better teams than ourselves”, said the Northern Irishman.
“But you can’t be too downhearted”.
This was the Celtic’s first game back in the group stage of the competition for three seasons, their most recent match ending in a 6-1 defeat at the same venue, and it was another chastening evening for the Scottish champions.
“They completely played us off the park”.
Celtic captain Scott Brown blasted his, and his team-mates’, second-half performance as “unacceptable” in their 7-0 thumping at the hands of Barcelona.
“This is going to be a brilliant learning season for us in the Champions League. You need to conserve the ball. clearly the top-class team won, but I couldn’t have asked any more of my team”.
Brazilian Talisca canceled out a 12th-minute earlier goal by Argentina’s Franco Cervi for Benfica, finishing a rebound from Besiktas goalkeeper Tolga Zengin’s save.
“They got the third goal then a combination of tiredness, freshness and quality showed”. But the game was called-off as they were not satisfied that the ball would roll sufficiently.
“He plays everywhere because he has freedom”, Luis Enrique said afterwards.
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“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”.
