Guardiola: “Levante are one of the worst teams to have to fight back against"

The Barça manager highlighted the difficulty of fighting back after Bakero’s initial goal.

Guardiola praised Levante’s defensive organization and said that “they are where they are because they’ve done a good job”.

“It’s a little less impossible,” said Guardiola on Barça’s chances of winning the La Liga title.

Barça won three valuable points at the Ciutat de València to keep their La Liga title hopes alive. The team was forced to fight back from a one goal deficit against one of the teams, according to Josep Guardiola, that are “one of the worst to fight back against.” In the end, Barça managed to win the match 1-2, to which Guardiola said “it keeps us in it,” in reference to the battle with Real Madrid for the top spot of La Liga.

The manager highlighted the qualities of Barça’s rival: “they are one of the worst team to have to fight back against. They are very well organized on defence, they have players with a lot of experience. Furthermore, they’re fantastic on the counter. After the first goal, they went back [in their own half] to defend the result. It’s clear that Levante have made it to where they are now because they’ve done a good job.”

On how the game played out, the manager said that “in the second half we opened up the field. Our objective was to score the 0-1, but after conceding a goal, we had to change some things up to win the match. Cuenca gave us amplitude. Playing a goal down against these types of teams is very complicated, and if you lose the ball they kill you. We tried to attack with everything we had and in the end we managed to get a result that keeps us in it.”

Even though a lot of the attention is now on next weekend’s Clásico at the Camp Nou, Guardiola said that he’s more eager to face Chelsea: “I don’t have the strength to think about it [the match against Madrid]. We have to focus on Chelsea, it’s a Champions League semifinal.”

He did say that the match against Madrid will be marked by the power “of a team that have only lost two matches” in the Liga and he anticipates a “terribly difficult” match. He added, “if they win, it’s over. We’ll see how we come into the match. We’ll have to play a very good game to beat them.” On Barça’s chances of retaining the Liga title, Guardiola said that “it’s a little less impossible.” (via FCBarcelona.cat)