This is Barcelona coach’s message before playing against Atletico Madrid
Barcelona tactician, Ernesto Valverde, asked his players to prepare themselves as best as possible and maintain full focus ahead of the match against one of the rival teams, Atletico Madrid. According to the former Athletic Bilbao coach, Atletico is a strong opponent who can be troublesome and make any team suffer.
As is known, Barcelona will indeed play a difficult match in the middle of this week, precisely Friday in the early morning WIB (10/01). The defending champion of the Spanish La Liga will face his rival, Atletico Madrid who was runner-up to the League last season in the semifinal round of the Spanish Super Cup this year.
Obviously the party will give its own pressure for Barcelona, given its eternal rivals, Real Madrid had already stepped into the Final after a landslide victory over Valencia in the semifinals. But apart from that, the quality of Atletico Madrid is worth watching out for. Ernesto Valverde, as Barcelona coach, judged that Diego Simeone’s troops always made it difficult for any team.
“We will play Atletico Madrid and we know that it is never easy to face a quality team like them,” Valverde was quoted as saying by Sportsmole.
Furthermore, the manager insists that his team will perform with the best strength in the match later, without the slightest underestimation of the opposing team or this competition.
“We must be on standby, because anything can happen in the match later. This is a knockout phase match, where the winning team will go to the final. “So we will treat this match like any other match in the League” he said.
Despite acknowledging the good quality possessed by Atletico Madrid, Valverde claimed to have pocketed the strength of the opponent and confidently could reduce the direction of Diego Simeone’s team in the match later.
“We are familiar with their playing style, and our target is to win. We already learned how to play them when we met in the league some time ago. The match was a fierce match, but we were able to win it,” said the coach.
Barcelona itself is not strengthened by some of the mainstay players in the match later, names like Arthur Melo, Ter Stegen, and Ousmane Dembele are still struggling with injuries.