Paris Saint-Germain boss Luis Enrique has said that facing former club FC Barcelona in the Champions … [+]
Paris Saint-Germain boss Luis Enrique said that facing former club FC Barcelona in the Champions League will see him come home “like at Christmas” during a pre-match press conference on Saturday.
The two continental giants are set lock horns in the elite European competition’s quarterfinals next month, and while Barca president Rafa Yuste appears more confident that the Catalans can pull off the win, his head coach Xavi Hernandez was cautious in his own sitdown with the media this weekend.
Xavi called PSG “one of the worst rivals that we could face and explained that he knows Luis Enrique, his staff and part of the squad very well.”
“We have the hope of playing a good quarterfinal. It is time to dream and show that we can compete against one of the best teams in Europe.”
“Maybe they are favorites, but they are not a forgiving rival. We have more Champions League titles than them, but their economic power is in a different situation,” Xavi also remarked later.
Xavi was on the money saying that he knows Luis Enrique well. After all, the pair were teammates at Camp Nou before the ex-Spain manager later had Xavi as his captain for the trebl-wining 2014/2015 that brought Barca’s last triumph on the continent.
Despite playing for bitter rivals Real Madrid first, Luis Enrique is more strongly aligned with the Blaugrana which influenced his remarks in a pre-match press conference ahead of his team’s Sunday Ligue 1 meeting with Montpellier.
“I’m very happy. I’m coming home, like at Christmas. We return to Spain and Barcelona, which is undoubtedly a very special place. PSG and Barça are two teams with whom we have shared a lot of things together. Some very pretty, some very morbid; I feel very good there, it’s very good news,” Luis Enrique beamed.
“We knew that the competition was going to give us a draw with a very difficult and high-level team. The grid has two parts. We are in one, with Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Dortmund. We’ll have to show that we deserve to go further on the pitch. The favourites are on the other side of the table, it will be difficult to predict. [And] very interesting,” he predicted.
