Lionel Messi has spoken out since Barcelona’s destruction at Anfield in the Champions League semi-finals earlier this month.
The skipper isn’t happy with his team’s performances on the European stage these past two years – last season, they were dumped out by Roma in a similar fashion.
A win this weekend against Valencia and the Catalan giants will complete their second domestic double in as many years, but Messi admits the Barcelona team can’t get the Reds out of their head.
“I had a great first season as captain, apart from the Liverpool game,” the Argentine forward told reporters – via Sky Sports. “Regrettably, that game has tainted the season.
“I haven’t watched the game again, it was very similar to Roma where we went into the game and suddenly they scored. We reacted well, then [Liverpool] scored the second goal and we didn’t compete.
“We let them walk all over us.
“We were all thinking about being champions and we were all very disappointed, first for the elimination, second for the [way], third for the fact it happened again.
“It was a very tough blow to take and it was tough to lift ourselves up, you could see that in the next few games.”
Messi and Barcelona are but the latest to suffer the wrath of Anfield, and it’s got a lot more to do with the atmosphere created by the fans than our opponents ‘let‘ us ‘walk all over‘ them.
He’s right though – his team were simply shell-shocked every time the Reds put the ball in the back of the net. They well, and truly, bottled it on Merseyside.
As much as it’ll hurt losing in the circumstances that they did, they can be proud of their season – to go and do the domestic double two years on the spin is no short order.
Now the Reds turn their attention to Spurs and the small matter of a game to play in Madrid next weekend.