Barcelona struggled against third division side CF Intersity despite the victory. Xavi Hernández reveal why it happened.
Barcelona struggled to beat third-tier side CF Intercity at the Estadio Jose Rico Perez in the round of 32 King’s Cup, Thursday (5/1/2023) early morning WIB. They won 4-3 after extra time.
Barcelona have always managed to take the lead in regular time thanks to goals from Ronald Araujo, Ousmane Dembele and Raphinha. However, the hosts can bounce back from a hat-trick Oriol Soldevila. Ansu Fati then determined El Barca’s pass thanks to his goal in extra time.
Intercity put Barcelona in difficulty even if in reality they excelled by far in the quality of the players. El Barca can be so dominant in possession.
They recorded 67% ball possession compared to Intercity who were only 23%. Even so, the home side could still get plenty of chances from quick attacks. Intercity managed to make a shot with six on goal.
Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez thinks this happened because his team weren’t very good at defending by giving the Intercity players a lot of space. He also criticized the poor finishing of his troops so that the match had to go to extra time.
In this match, Barcelona could make 29 shots of which 10 were on goal. However, Xavi still praised his adopted sons who were able to control the match well.
“Sometimes you don’t defend as well as you would like, but we needed to be able to kill the game and we weren’t clinical enough. We weren’t good enough in both penalty areas today,” said Xavi. of AS.
“But we had to dominate the match and in that case we played well. We played with good pace. We did some good things but sometimes we also made life too difficult for ourselves,” he explained.
Watch a video “Xavi: Barcelona are not the favorites to win the Europa League, but Sevilla“
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