Barca will be trying ‘to win everything’

AT VARIOUS times this season Barcelona have appeared to prioritise one competition over another.

It began in pre-season when Lionel Messi singled out the Champions League as the competition he most wanted to bring back to the Camp Nou.

And it continued into Barcelona’s Spanish Cup campaign with coach Ernesto Valverde resting Messi and picking a second-string defence in the earlier rounds.

Now, Barca find themselves 90 minutes from the Copa del Rey final, that approach seems to have changed with Messi himself declaring the treble very much on.

Ahead of today’s semi-final return against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu, balanced at 1-1 from the Barcelona first leg, Messi said: “We are going to try to win everything. We are not going to throw any competition. We are one step away from reaching a final.

“It’s going to be very tough because it’s against Madrid and it’s at their place, but we will go there to win and we are confident we can do it. Then we will go back to thinking about the league.”

Real coach Santiago Solari echoed those sentiments when he said after his team’s 2-1 win over Levante: “We are still in three competitions and the only way to face them is to concentrate on the next game.”

Madrid have already hinted at a perceived injustice of Barcelona having 24 hours extra to prepare for today’s game.

Solari described the fixtures calendar that had Real’s visit to Levante on Sunday and Barca’s trip to Sevilla on Saturday as “curious”.

Gerard Pique responded on Saturday night by saying: “If I remember correctly they had one more day of rest in this fixture earlier in the season and we ended up winning 5-1.”

That game was played on Sunday, October 28. Real had enjoyed an extra 24 hours of preparation having playing in Europe the previous Tuesday, a day before Barcelona.

Valverde’s team ran out easy winners without Messi, with a Luis Suarez hat-trick and goals from Philippe Coutinho and Arturo Vidal.

Julen Lopetegui was sacked as Real coach the next day and Solari took over. His progress has been stop-start with as many setbacks as steps forward, but he does have Real 90 minutes from a final.

The winners of the “Clasico” semi-final will play Valencia or Betis on May 25 in Betis’s Benito Villamarin stadium.

| dpa