Unai Emery underlines the importance of the three points up for grabs against Barcelona (Sunday, 4:15pm CEST)
Villarreal CF head coach Unai Emery underlined that his team is completely focused on this Sunday’s tough league match against Barcelona (4:15pm CEST, Estadio d la Cerámica), regardless of the UEFA Europa League semi-final first leg against Arsenal the following Thursday.
“My experience tells me that if you think in upcoming games you don’t compete at the same level, and that isn’t good. My experience tells me that if the team is competing well, you should continue in the same way. It’s true, however, that sometimes it’s hard to recover if there are a lot of games in a short amount of time, but players need to know how to manage that and these ones know how to play every three days,” underlined the manager.
The Basque coach underlined that he will pick the best team possible: “We need to differentiate between the two competitions and do what is best to compete in both of them. The league is the competition which could allow us to be in Europe next season. So far, the team has known how to take on both challenges and we will continue the same. The match against Barcelona will demand a lot from us, but that’s what we’re up against this week, and we need to completely focus on it without thinking about what comes after.”
Emery also praised Barça’s good form: “Barcelona are always a difficult team to face. My stats and Villarreal’s stats prove that, we both have a high number of defeats against Barcelona. Now they’re in great form, they’re playing well and they’re aggressive without the ball. They have great players, footballers who stand out. They’re stable under Koeman and they’re in the fight for the league, that is their aim at the moment, so I’m expecting a really tough match.”
The Yellows head coach was clear on how his players should line up against Barça. “They are games where there are a lot of spaces that open up, so we need to try and find them when we can, and when we can’t, we need to know how to tighten up more. We need to be clinical in both boxes, and hope for a game that turns out differently than the first time we met this season. It is going to be a tough match, as Barcelona haven’t been in as good form for a long while, both with and without the ball. We want to return to winning ways at home and bring happiness to all Yellows,” he finished.
See the full Emery press conference in Spanish by clicking on the play logo.
