Luis Enrique: 'We deserved to beat Villarreal'

Luis Enrique, whose side was beaten 2-1 by Athletic Bilbao in its opening match of 2017, was disappointed not to come away with maximum points against Villareal after a 1-1 draw on Sunday.

Published : Jan 09, 2017 13:12 IST

Third-placed Barca now sit five points adrift of leaders Real Madrid, who have a game in hand.
Third-placed Barca now sit five points adrift of leaders Real Madrid, who have a game in hand.
lightbox-info

Third-placed Barca now sit five points adrift of leaders Real Madrid, who have a game in hand.

Luis Enrique believes Barcelona did enough to beat Villarreal in its 1-1 La Liga draw on Sunday. Barca was left to rely on a 90th-minute Lionel Messi free-kick to take a share of the spoils at the renamed Estadio de la Ceramica, with Nicola Sansone having earlier opened the scoring.

The visitors saw two penalty shouts turned down during a frantic period of the second half in which the home side also had calls for a spot-kick waved away.

And Luis Enrique, whose side was beaten 2-1 by Athletic Bilbao in its opening match of 2017, was disappointed not to come away with maximum points. "The team deserved more, we deserved to win, but football is not always fair," he said.

"Villarreal are a team that try to play, they have quality players. They know their style of play well, with and without the ball. We knew about the difficulty of the game against Villarreal, but we deserved to win. I have nothing more to say to my players, we played a great game.

"The same feelings that I had in Bilbao, [we played] even better in fact. We created many chances against the team who has conceded the fewest goals in La Liga, although we were not as accurate as we could have been in the final metres."

Third-placed Barca now sit five points adrift of leaders Real Madrid, who have a game in hand. "There is plenty of the league still to play, we will definitely be fighting for it," added Luis Enrique. "We must continue improving and be even stronger to fix this form. The hardest thing in football is to score goals."

Sign in to unlock all user benefits
  • Get notified on top games and events
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign up / manage to our newsletters with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early bird access to discounts & offers to our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide to our community guidelines for posting your comment