FC Barcelona fear more dangerous Real Madrid than ever before the clasico
Jordi Roura, Barça’s assistant manager, has made it very clear that he expects Real Madrid to be highly competitive in the Spanish Cup semi-final’s first leg on Wednesday night. “These are very tight matches that are decided by small details”, he observes. FC Barcelona and Real Madrid are facing the clasico in a very different situation: the Catalans lead the Spanish League, 15 points ahead the all-whites.
Barcelona (FCB).- Barça’s Assistant Manager, Jordi Roura, appeared in his first ever pre-clásico press conference, and he doesn’t think that missing players or the 15 point deficit in the Spanish League are factors that need to be taken into consideration when Real Madrid are going into a game like this. “They do admittedly have important players missing, but they have very good quality replacements. I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference” he said.
Roura, who is acting as Barça’s coach during Tito Vilanova’s punctual absence for health reasons, added that “we have a big lead in the league and are in a comfortable situation, but this is a different story. Nothing has already been done here. Under these circumstances, they’re much more dangerous”.
Ambition at the Madrid’s Bernabéu Stadium
Roura expects “Madrid to be intense and super-competitive, a very tough opponent … But we’re going into this with the same ambition as in other competitions … We’ll try to be the team we have always been at the Bernabéu. We’ll be looking to play our football, impose our style and get a good result … We each have our own styles and we’ll be competing as hard as we can”.
Calm attitude
This his first ever experience of being in a charge of Barça in a clásico, but Jordi Roura claims that “I am taking this calmly and naturally. It’s just one more game and I’m not playing. It is these extraordinary players who’ll be doing that.” As for predicting the outcome, he merely said that “experience tells us that when these two teams meet, nothing is decided in the first leg and they’re usually very tight games that are decided by small details”.