With many of his players in action with their worldwide sides in midweek, Barcelona coach Luis Enrique rotated his squad, resting regulars Luis Suarez, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique, Sergi Roberto, Jordi Alba and talisman Lionel Messi.
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Luis Enrique is expected to field his first-choice 11 against Celtic, so Suarez will meet up with his former Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers.
“Luis Suarez is one of the most lovely men you can come across”, Rodgers told reporters.
Luis Suarez has beaten Cristiano Ronaldo’s record for the number of goals and assists in their first 100 games at Barca and Real.
“We know it’s going to be hard but we are full of confidence at the moment and we have reason to believe we have the quality to get a result”. I had the pleasure of working with Luis as a human being for two years and he was incredible.
It was the Catalan club’s first competitive defeat since April. And when we have got the ball, trying to create’.
“When you work with big players, they always want to go out in the next game and have a good result and performance”.
Rodgers has reinvigorated the Glasgow club since taking over from Ronny Deila in the close season, qualifying for the group stages after a two-year absence and overseeing a 5-1 thumping of Rangers in Saturday’s Old Firm game.
“But at the level we played at tonight it would have been hard (for any opponent)”.
“I think they expect their team to really compete well and, if that happens, they will be happy”, he said.
Assistant manager, Chris Davies, says the Scottish champions are aiming to trouble a Barcelona side who suffered a shock 2-1 home defeat by newly-promoted Alaves on Saturday.
And Enrique is not taking the Scottish champions lightly. The players will be in a good place, but this is a different animal. Things didn’t go well for us out there and you have to give Alaves credit because they did a great job. I am happy to play them here and looking forward to going to one of the best stadiums in Europe.
Messi opened the scoring after just three minutes, but Celtic then had a chance to equalise, only for Moussa Dembele to fluff his lines from the penalty spot.
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With just three minutes played, Neymar’s clever reverse pass on the left sent Messi clean through a static Celtic defence, and he blasted a shot high past De Vries from a tight angle.
