The Professional Football Director, Andoni Zubizarreta, met the media on Wednesday in Donetsk, where the team spent the night after qualifying for the semifinals of Europe's top competition. Zubizarreta emphasised particularly the difficulty for a team to be able to qualify for the semi-final over four consecutive years, and for the fifth time in six seasons.

A milestone difficult to repeat

In this sense, Zubizarreta stated that, at this time, the Barça first team is "enjoying the situation which we’re in", and always bearing in mind that “this milestone is very difficult to repeat....and at the same time, at the highest level of competition," added the sports director of Professional Football.

4 possible ‘clásicos’, "with the satisfaction of the road already travelled"

If Real Madrid manage to get through to the semifinals of the Champions League, Madrid and Barça will come face to face 4 times, in Saturday's League fixture, next Wednesday in the Cup, and the Champions League double-leg tie, all in the next 20 days. Zubizarreta commented that this scenario was being handled "from the satisfaction of the position in which we are in, and with the satisfaction of the road we’ve come down...when we were on tour last summer we would certainly have signed the contract to be where we are now".

Maximum concentration and respect for the opponent

For now, the first ‘Clásico’, the League game in Madrid, comes up this Saturday. Zubizarreta explained that the squad, led by Josep Guardiola, will face up to the game with "concentration" and "respect" towards a team, Real Madrid, which he described as "enormous, with fantastic capability from club, players and individual talent".