Chelsea costly lapse give Barcelona the edge
First leg: Chelsea 1-1 FC Barcelona.
Willian had it on against the Spaniard and got a well-deserved goal for Chelsea after hitting the post twice earlier in the game. The Blues had the game on and were getting closer to a second goal. However, on one giveaway and a costly mistake in Chelsea’s defense set Iniesta perfectly.
Messi just had to finish it from 10 yards out to level the game as he scored his first goal against Chelsea. A drought that ended after 730 minutes! The return leg is three weeks from today and BettingTop 10 has the best odds for Barcelona – Chelsea. Make sure tu give it a look.
Chelsea’s coach was disappointed at the end of the match and his face looks more like Chelsea had lost the game. His team will have to score in Barcelona and probably win to advance.
He commented post-match:
“I think we were very close to playing the perfect game. I think we paid for one mistake but as you know against this opponent, and players like Messi, Iniesta and Suarez, if you make a mistake you pay.’
It’s a pity because at the end of the game we are disappointed with the final result. We hit the post twice with Willian. There is a bit of disappointment but this game must give us a lot of confidence to trust that in the second leg the qualification is open.
It won’t be easy, we must be realistic. They showed they are a fantastic team but we showed that if we are ready to work very hard together defensively, but continue to have the right feeling with the ball and create chances to score, we can try to do something incredible at the Nou Camp.
Without the mistake, Barcelona were finding great difficulty in creating chances to score. At 1-0 I saw two chances for us to exploit the situation and score the second goal. We hit the post twice (in the first half), we were unlucky. When you play this type of game against Barca you know you gave 120 per cent.”
For Valverde this is a great result.
Barcelona look forward to moving on to the next stage. He was also for Messi who has now scored against Chelsea. He commented:
“This is a difficult ground and we were playing against the Premiership champions. It was clash of styles between two different teams. We wanted to control the possession and they wanted to surprise us on the counter. But we couldn’t finish things off in the final third. There was a lot of traffic in and around their area.
They were playing a five-man defense. But if we were to play with five forwards, all we would have done is create chances for them. We were trying to finish off our moves, but we also had to be careful to protect us from counter attacks.
The away goal here was very important. It means they won’t have a favorable result to defend in the second leg. I think we’ll both stick to our own styles at the Camp Nou. We have the edge, but it’s nothing definitive.”
