Barcelona all about giving up the La Liga title this season especially after their 2-1 defeat against Real Madrid at Camp Nou, which simply gave the full advantage to Jose Mourinho’s squad.
Although the defeat would surely affected the Catalan players, but their manager, Pep Guardiola, simply hopes that his boys can immediately get rid off that feeling ahead of their Champions League second leg tie against Chelsea this Tuesday.
“We hope to recover well and play the game against Chelsea. I’ll talk to my players on Sunday when things have calmed down, we’ll focus on next week – which means we have to focus on Chelsea,” Guardiola said.
Obviously having been beaten by their arch rival in front of their fans isn’t actually a moral boosting result against Chelsea, who already had a 1-0 advantage in the first meeting. That’s why Guardiola must helped his players to find new motivation as another defeat this midweek would simply made things really disappointing for Barcelona as they would lose two main objectives in just a week.
However, the spirit of recuperation has already been installed on Barca’s captain, Carles Puyol’s heart as he also urged his teammates to step aside their failure in the league and immediately get their focus on beating Chelsea. Acknowledging there’s still a big chance to win the Champions League this season by eliminating the Blues this midweek, Puyol simply hopes that his comrades didn’t fall into the same trap that hit them in their last two matches.
Furthermore, Puyol also sees the opportunity of meeting Madrid again in the Champions League final this season but he doesn’t want to take away their focus on Chelsea as the ticket is not on their hands as just yet. The Spain international defender truly believes that his team can eventually get their shape back again after suffering two consecutive defeats recently, that’s why his hoping that the fans will continue to pour their support like they always do.
“We now have to focus on Tuesday – it’s a competition we are keen to win and we are close to another final. we have to be very aware of their counter attacks – I can see it being a similar game tactically to the Madrid match,” Puyol stated. “That(meeting Madrid in the Champions League final) would be a very attractive final, we’d have to see what would happen then, but for now we are centered on Tuesday”.
