The emphatic victory also saw Barca surpass their biggest win in the Champions League to date, a 7-1 defeat of Bayer Leverkusen in 2012.
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Lionel Messi’s first goal of the Champions League season took three minutes. Arsenal took advantage of that, and drew level with Alexis Sanchez scoring in the 78 minute.
“They do that to much better teams than ourselves”, he said.
“Of course, it’s never nice professionally when that happens”, he said. You are frustrated and disappointed. “Whether you are playing Barcelona or Berwick, there is professional pride to play for”. They were hoping for an earlier kick-off time which would have allowed them to fly home after the game, but it could not be made possible.
Messi became the Champions League’s highest scorer of hat-tricks in Barca’s 7-0 rout of Celtic as he netted his sixth, one more than Cristiano Ronaldo, prompting Enrique to state the No 10 could do it all, regardless of where he played. We were great in our pressing and in recovering the ball after losing it.
“We practically didn’t commit any mistakes. Our home games will be very important, where our supporters genuinely create an extra man for us”.
Barca continued to exert early pressure but were nearly undone when Ter Stegen tripped visiting striker Scott Sinclair. Celtic had a penalty saved when trailing 1-0 midway through the first half. If you can score the penalty and get it to 1-1 then it can make the crowd a bit nervy, especially after the weekend loss [against Alaves].
“We knew the next goal after half-time was going to be important. They’re so good with the quality they have, they find solutions when supposedly there’s no way through”. “It moves so fast and so do they”.
“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”.
“There was hardly any preparation to face a team who beat you up with the ball at times”. In this moment in time Luis is the best striker in the world there is no question about that. “Like all world-class players that you face, they always find the space”.
“The framework of the team is strong, it is lit up by the front three and Luis is the spearhead of that”.
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Ancelotti, who has won the Champions League twice with AC Milan and once with Real Madrid, said: “We want to be competitive until the end”.
