FCBARCELONA.CAT

01.03.2008 23:08

“Their first two goals were the key”

Jordi Clos

Xavi Hernández has highlighted Barça’s game for the first 35 minutes, but regretted how Agüero and Maxi’s goals came about in the first half. The players in blue and red remembered that there is still a lot of league to play.

“We played to sentence the game for 35 minutes, we played comfortably. We were very unlucky, w2ith half a chance they scored two key goals”. Xavi Hernández sums up perfectly what happened in the first half. According to the midfielder, in the second half “we tried everything, but they had more quality up front”. Xavi thinks that the 4-2 defeat in the Vicente Calderon has to serve as experience: “We have to learn from these mistakes, crush the opponent when he’s down”. And he ended “We’re five points behind, there’s a lot of time left and we’ll fight to the end”.

Carles Puyol:

“They had a good day and we had a bad one”

“Their first goal rocked us”

“We had the game under control and in five minutes it slipped from our hands”

“The first goal was bad luck, the second did us a lot of damage and the penalty broke the game”.

Atletico always rises to the occasion against Barça and today it worked well for them. Kun is a great player, it’s a difficult team to stop in attack”.

“The team is affected, but, as we’ve demonstrated before, we’ll carry on “.
“El vestidor està tocat, però, com hem demostrat altres cops, tirarem endavant”.

Gabriel Milito:

“We played quite a good first half up to the equaliser”.

“At half time we didn’t understand how we could be losing”.

“In the second half we went looking for the draw and lost two more goals”.

“We weren’t good in defence”.

“It’s always bad to lose, but there’s still time and the important thing is that we have to continue winning all the games we can until the end of season”.

Andrés Iniesta:

“The draw knocked us off and they were very effective”.

“It was an opportunity, in a difficult ground, but on Tuesday we have another battle and we have to keep going”.

“We’re five points behind and we’ll try and draw back the difference