MADRID, 20 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Villarreal manager Marcelino García Toral is confident of “playing a very nice match” against FC Barcelona on Sunday at the Estadio de la Cerámica, the “best” team in LaLiga EA Sports at the start of the campaign, while praising Lamine Yamal.
“It’s a big game for us. We’re playing against a great team, the best in the competition at the moment. The results and the numbers say so. We’re going to play a very nice game with great expectations. These are the kind of games that we professionals like to play,” he said at a press conference.
For the Asturian coach, the Blaugrana team remains fearsome under the orders of Hansi Flick, but he is confident that his team will also have a good start to the season. “Barça has great potential; we are aware that we have the capacity to improve, but having collected 11 out of 15 possible points, playing on difficult grounds, is a sign that we are doing well,” he said.
However, Marcelino made it clear that the ‘submarine’ will look for its chances of winning, pointing to the defeat of the Blaugrana in the Champions League. “The objective is to win. Barça are coming off a loss in a match that shows that, sometimes, football puts you in unexpected situations. Nobody wants to be left with one less player in the first minutes of the match,” he said.
“Yesterday’s game is not an indicator of how the team works. FC Barcelona plays with speed, with rhythm on the ball, more vertically than we are used to, and applies a series of other characteristics to the game that make it more dangerous. It is a super attractive team,” he added.
On the other hand, the yellow coach referred to the bad run against the Catalans. “The longer something doesn’t happen, the closer it is to happening. It happened there last year, and with a result that nobody could have predicted. We are excited and ambitious to play a great game. We are going to try to be very effective in the areas. We have to get the most out of our strong points,” he confessed.
Marcelino was also asked about Lamine Yamal. “We are all constantly surprised by what a child can do on a football pitch: his boldness, his self-confidence. He is a footballer who can mark an era, but it depends on many factors. The fact that there are footballers of that level in our league makes the league even greater,” he concluded.