Xavi has said that he hopes his team Barcelona recovers well from the defeat against the Dutch club Ajax Amsterdam.
In their previous Champions League game against Ajax, Barcelona suffered a 1-2 defeat. That was an away game for them, but, the kind of form they had been in, one had expected them to secure 3 points, but, a determined Ajax team stunned them.
The victory of Ajax was even more remarkable because of the fact that they played with only 10 guys for a large part of the game as one of their main players Joel Veltman had been shown red card in the 48th minute.
Talking to the reporters on Thursday about that game against Ajax, Xavi said, “It was the first game that we lost this season and I am hoping that it doesn’t have adverse effects on us.”
“We still have to play a match against Celtic and we will be playing that match on our home ground. So, I reckon we are still the favourites to finish first in our group.”
When asked if getting trailed by a couple of goals put his team under huge amount of pressure, Xavi said, “Yes, it did. It’s never easy to bounce back after getting down by two goals. I think there was lack of intensity in our game that day. Yes, we did raise our game a bit in the latter half, but, they had already done enough damage before that.”
Despite that defeat against Ajax, Barcelona didn’t move down in the Group H points table. They are still at the first position with 10 points in 5 games.
Barcelona’s next game is a La Liga encounter against Athletic Bilbao. That game will be played at San Mames on Sunday.