Barcelona manager Luis Enrique has expressed his delight at his side’s progress to the final of the Spanish Cup.
The Catalan giants took on Villarreal in the second leg of their Spanish Cup semi-final tie at the Madrigal yesterday. Having won 3-1 in the first leg at the Camp Nou, Barcelona started in a position of strength, and they continued their rampaging recent form to seal another 3-1 win to confine the hosts to a 6-2 aggregate loss.
The win sees Enrique’s side reach their second consecutive Spanish Cup final. Barcelona’s strong showing in La Liga and the Champions League means that they remain on course for a treble after their failure to win any major silverware last season.
Enrique expressed his delight over Barcelona’s passage to the final.
“We’re certainly feeling happy; we’ll see how we get on”, the manager was quoted as saying by AS.
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The visitors got off to a rollicking start after their first attacking move of the game resulted in a Neymar goal following a sumptuous assist from Lionel Messi. And Enrique added that the opening goal made things easy for his side.
“We hadn’t bargained on scoring in practically the first move of the match.
“It couldn’t really have worked out much better than it did but we hadn’t planned it that way.”
He further added that he had instructed his side to control the match as any openings would have meant inviting trouble from the attacking players of Villarreal.
“We didn’t want an end-to-end game, we wanted to control play.
“Villarreal had two or three chances in the opening half and in the second half, we controlled the game a lot better.
“Our objective was to win the game, but control the ball because we knew that they would cause us problems.”
Barcelona will play Athletic Bilbao in the final after the Basques defeated Espanyol in the other semi-final. The clash is scheduled to be played on 30th May for which the venue will be decided at a later date.
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