Barcelona manager Luis Enrique has described star striker Lionel Messi as the “best player in the world” at any position, after the Argentine talisman struck a record-breaking hat-trick to guide Barcelona to a spectacular 7-0 win over Celtic in their Champion League clash on Tuesday. “We have scored a lot of goals in the past, but the important thing is that these goals lead to titles”. It’s not like us, even coming here we usually do better than that.
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The German ‘keeper has now saved three of the four penalties he has faced in the Champions League.
It took Lionel Messi just 3 minutes to open the scoring, when he lashed home from Neymar’s pass.
Luis Enrique reverted to an nearly full-strength team after his rotation policy backfired in Saturday’s (Sunday NZ time) shock 2-1 La Liga defeat at home to Alaves. “Today we really enjoyed being back in tandem”, added Suarez. But they are a team of top world-class players and this will not hamper us in any way.
“They’re always going to score goals and always going to create chances, but we need to play better than that if we are to have any hope of getting through this group”. We’ve been here before and got beat 2-1, 1-0 and there’s also been a 6-1. When we got it, we kept giving it away.
The second half was something of a procession, with a Neymar free-kick making it three and leaving goalkeeper Dorus de Vries asking if he could have done more to keep a relatively central curler out. The three players hadn’t begun a match together since last season.
“To have had hardly any preparation time really to come up against the world’s best at keeping the ball and tiring you out is always going to be hard really”.
And on Barca fans’ show of estelada flags, which got the club in hot water with UEFA last season, he concluded: “I only talk about what I see and just focus on the football”.
Celtic’s frustration was shown in the 63rd minute when Nir Bitton chose to have a shot from inside his own half and Ter Stegen simply stood still to save and set up another period of possession for the dominant hosts.
“It is a long season, we have a really good team and we have made a good start, but right now we are a bit sad and have to think about what we can do better”.
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“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.
