After another Valencia-Barça match that will be remembered for the football played, the emotion, and the goals, Pep Guardiola described the game thus: "It was a wonderful spectacle, a great exhibition of the beautiful game". The Boss wished to congratulate Valencia, "a very good team, with a very good manager". Summarising what he’d seen on the pitch, he said: "They caused us problems in the first half, not as many in the second, and we got better in the last 20 or 25 minutes".

Tactical changes

Barça started with a 3-4-3 line-up, which was changed after the break to the usual 4-3-3, but finished the game with the initial formation. Guardiola explained: "We knew that in the last few games we’ve been attacked down the left side, and at the start we planned that Mascherano would cover that area", and continued: "At half time we went back to 4 defenders to give more stability to the team, so they wouldn’t feel under so much pressure. Towards the end we went back to 3 in defence, and it’s when we played our best football”.

Once again, Guardiola stressed the difficulty of winning every game, and denied that is was the hypothetical ‘2 team League’: "We may agree or not with the words of the Directors, but the players always put things in their place. They are the players who compete. There’s not a single team that goes onto the field thinking they can’t win”.

Satisfied with the match

At the end of it all Guardiola left Valencia feeling "very satisfied with the match". He considers that, in general, it was a "fair result". According to him, "it’s the way forward". However, the Barça Manager will encourage his players to "learn from what they didn’t do so well, and move on".