Barcelona delivered a convincing 3-0 win against Elche this Wednesday afternoon for La Liga after a few negative results.
Ronald Koeman seemed relieved as Barcelona put a stop to their negative run with a large 3-0 win against Elche in the Spanish league. The Blaugrana didn’t have the easiest first half but Messi and his teammates pulled through for Barca in the last 45 minutes.
“We needed to win after the two results,” said Koeman as per Marca. “We had a great second half, we made the difference. We should have done better in the first half.”
Before the match, the Dutch manager had called out Barcelona’s older players and asked them to step up. In fact, Lionel Messi’s leadership was clear this Wednesday as he expressed his frustration with the team’s lack of intensity.
“When I’m talking about the veterans, I’m not referring to him because Messi is still scoring lots of goals,” Koeman clarified. “It’s the others who have to make the difference, not Messi. He’s still scoring, like he showed today.
“Everyone could see that we were lacking intensity and rhythm, especially on the ball. It’s good that Messi, as the captain, is asking for intensity. [The reason for the lack in intensity] could be anything. Let’s not forget that we’ve played a lot of games.
“A player can get tired. There are lots of substitutes to try to freshen [the team] up. We’re always looking for the best thing for the match we’re playing. Players like Antoine [Griezmann] have played so many games. We had to find freshness. Sometimes you have to make changes to freshen things up.”
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