Barcelona were eliminated on Thursday evening in the quarter-finals of the Europa League, after a 2-3 loss against Eintracht Frankfurt. The Catalans also lost Pedri, who had to be replaced at half time with a hamstring injury and was replaced by Frenkie de Jong. Barcelona coach Xavi says he is concerned, while Spanish media suggests that Pedri’s season could be over.
“I’m worried about Pedri, we have to see what he has. It’s very bad news.” marca up from Xavi’s mouth. The same newspaper writes that things ‘do not look good’ for Pedri. Barcelona itself are only communicating that the midfielder has suffered a hamstring injury and that it remains to be seen how long he will be out of action. Pedri’s season may already be over, which would mean Barcelona would have to do without him in their last eight league games.
How suddenly there were not 5,000 but 30,000 Eintracht fans in the Camp Nou
The story behind the many German supporters at the Camp Nou.
Eintracht Frankfurt was supported at the Camp Nou by thousands of supporters, who had also taken their seats outside the box for the visiting fans. “Obviously the atmosphere was not in our favour, the club is working on it. The players also want to know what happened. It looked like a final, with an equal number of supporters from both clubs present. Something went wrong on our side, that’s for sure,” says Xavi. “This can’t happen when you’re playing at home. I want to thank all the Catalans who came, it’s a shame we couldn’t win.”
“This is a big disappointment, we had hopes to win this tournament,” continues Xavi about the elimination from the Europa League. “We were in control, but we didn’t know how to hurt Eintracht. We talked about losing the ball and that resulted in a goal against. You pay a price for those mistakes. We need to focus on LaLiga now. I don’t see this as failure, we have to learn from this. The goal is to make it to the Champions League and that is still possible.”
Xavi openly refused Óscar Mingueza to lose weight. “He was not bad. We should not put the elimination with one player. We did not play well both in the first leg and in the return. So we have to congratulate Eintracht”, Xavi says. “For us it is important to quickly shift the focus to the next league match. We have to believe in what we are doing and consistently perform. Because if we don’t do that, you can just lose like here.”