BARCELONA 14 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The coach of Real Betis Balompié, Manuel Pellegrini, assured this Tuesday that the Copa del Rey round of 16 match against FC Barcelona is a “very complicated match” and “different” from the one a little over a month ago in which they tied at two goals, but he hopes his team has “the personality” to seek a ticket to the quarterfinals at the Lluís Companys Stadium
“It is a very complicated match, but we must not forget, because football is like that, that Barça has just lost three games in a row at home against three different rivals. They played very well against Real Madrid and we are going to try to cushion all the great virtues that they have and playing the game we played here, where we had many more chances of winning than them,” commented Pellegrini in the press conference prior to Wednesday’s game in Montjuïc.
All in all, he hopes to see a team that “has the personality to try to get to the next round.” “Of course, there are certain defensive considerations that must be taken considering the quality of the players they have, but I think the best way to try to qualify is to go for the game from the first minute, which is what we are going to do,” he stressed. .
“And if we don’t achieve it, let it be because Barcelona played better than us and not because we had a bad performance. The important thing is that we are going to continue having the aspiration and ambition and we are going to try to demonstrate it against Barcelona,” said the Chilean.
The Green and White coach also trusts that “hopefully” his team will repeat the performance they had in the last match against FC Barcelona, in which they got a point after drawing 2-2 after a goal in injury time from the former Betis player. Assane Diao. “We faced it well, we had many scoring opportunities to have won that game,” he recalled, without forgetting that December and this Wednesday’s “are different.” “Now we are going to play as visitors, but we hope to have a good performance,” he said.
Asked if Betis can take advantage of the fact that Barça is coming from two games accumulated for the Super Cup, the subsequent celebration of the title and the return trip home from Saudi Arabia, the ‘Engineer’ considered that they could represent “a small advantage “, but that “they are not factors that will decide the result of the match.” “They are going to decide, as I say many times, first the individual performance of the players and then the collective functioning of the teams,” he warned.
For Pellegrini, the irregularity that Betis accuses “is not something that only happens” to the Betis team. “It happens to all football teams. We are talking about what happened to Barcelona, which lost three home games when it seemed like a practically unbeatable team, and then scored five goals against Real Madrid. Or an Atlético de Madrid that was very criticized when he played against us and then he has won 14 games in a row, so all teams have bad games,” he remarked after the defeat in Valladolid last Saturday.
Regarding the status of the injured players, Pellegrini confirmed that Diego Llorente and Pablo Fornals will enter the squad as they have recovered from their respective injuries. However, he assured that Marc Roca and ‘Chimy Ávila’ “are still missing”, and he hopes that Giovanni Lo Celso “recovers as soon as possible” from the muscle problem that has kept him out of this match.
Finally, he confirmed that Fran Vieites will be the starting goalkeeper, despite the fact that he already is in LaLiga EA Sports after the more than possible departure of Rui Silva to Sporting de Portugal. “I already said at the beginning that Fran Vieites is going to be the starter in the Copa del Rey regardless of Rui Silva not being there. He is going to play in the Copa del Rey and we will see later in the following games who is going to be in charge of the goal,” he said.