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What's the story?
Barcelona and Manchester United are set to battle it out in the UEFA Champions League quarter-final second leg tonight at Nou Camp and the Blaugrana manager has revealed his approach going into the game, during his pre-match press conference.
In case you didn't know...
Barcelona hasn't progressed past the quarter-finals stage of the UEFA Champions League in the past three seasons and the pressure is immense on Valverde to deliver, especially since the La Liga is considered to be already in the bag. The defending Spanish champions are 9 points clear at the top of the La Liga table, with only 6 games to go.
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Barcelona carries a 1 goal advantage going into the fixture, but cannot take Manchester United for granted, especially considering the kind of fight and desire they showed to overcome a 2-0 first leg deficit to Paris Saint Germain with a 3-1 victory in Paris.
The heart of the matter
During the pre-match presser, Valverde was insistent that Barcelona are going out to press their advantage rather than sit back and defend their narrow 1-0 lead.
"We have scored a goal away from home but we can't sit on that,” said the Barcelona gaffer. "We will be true to our style but we are also aware of what they have in attack and the game can't become you attack us, we attack you. We don't want them to score but our game plan as always will be to try to score, anything else would be absurd.”
The former Athletic Bilbao boss was also wary of the fighting spirit embodied by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's Red Devils.
“Those that start the game will be important but so will those that finish it,” he said “Manchester United have something special in the last minutes of games. They have shown it this season and they won a European Cup here showing it. “We are very wary of the spirit that they have. In this Champions League they have done well away from home winning three out of four games. They have beaten Juventus and Paris Saint Germain in the last minutes so we will have to be at our best.”
What's next?
Barcelona faces off against Manchester United, at home at the Nou Camp on Wednesday, 12:30 pm Indian Standard Time.
