For Barcelona, the focus is now only on football
MESSI STAYS ON TARGET AS LA LIGA GIANTS CONTINUE TO TOP TABLE
arcelona coach Ernesto Valverde sees little reason to let the momentous political events in Catalonia distract his players’ focus after setting the club’s best ever start to a La Liga season.
On Valverde’s return to Athletic Bilbao, whom he left to take charge at the Camp Nou in June, goals from Lionel Messi and Paulinho secured a hardfought 2-0 win to restore Barca’s four-point lead over Valencia at the top of the table after nine wins and a draw in their opening 10 league games.
Victory came just a day after the Catalan parliament voted in favour of a unilateral declaration of independence and Spain reacted by asserting direct rule over the deeply divided region.
As a club, Barcelona have backed Catalonia’s right to selfdetermination in a referendum, but stopped short of supporting independence and Valverde again refused to get embroiled in the independence debate.
“For the past month, there has been a lot of news and every day it changes,” he said on Saturday. “The truth is, we concentrate on football. At the moment, it isn’t going badly for us and so that’s what we’ll continue to do.”
Far from some of the scintillating football played in Valverde’s early reign, Barca had to grind out victory at San Mames as they were put under intense pressure in the secondhalf after Messi had opened the scoring. However, two wonder saves from goalkeeper MarcAndre ter Stegen to deny Aritz Aduriz ensured Barca also registered their seventh clean sheet of their opening 10 La Liga matches.
“The bar is very high at Barcelona,” added Valverde. “We always want to dominate the game, to create chances and play football that people love — like in the move for Messi’s goal.
“Sometimes, you manage that and other times not because your opponent plays well, but defensively we are very sound and that is something we have tried to improve.
“We know our way of playing is to attack, but to be able to grit your teeth when it gets tough also has its merit. It’s important when you are put under pressure to be able to still salvage the points.”
Valverde enjoyed four highly successful seasons in his second spell as Athletic boss before being handed his shot at the big time at Barca. His presence has been badly missed as the Basques have now won just once in their last 12 matches under Jose Angel Ziganda.
Valverde admitted to feeling more spooked by the experience of sitting on the visiting bench than he imagined. “It was stranger than I thought it would be. I’m happy to come back and see so many friends, but when you come here as the visiting team you notice how much the fans push [Athletic] on.”