Barcelona's Ivan Rakitic set to miss El Clasico due to injury

Ivan Rakitic joined Barcelona from Sevilla in 2014.

FC Barcelona manager Luis Enrique has spoken of his disappointment at losing Ivan Rakitic who limped off in his side’s 3-0 victory over BATE Borisov in Wednesday’s Champions League match, as per reports on Marca. The Catalan has confirmed the Croatian is set to miss El Clasico at the Bernabeu on November 21 due to a muscular injury.

The 27-year-old midfielder is the latest player to join the Spanish champions’ long list of casualties this season. Rakitic will now join the likes of Lionel Messi, Rafinha who are still on the road to recovery. However, there’ s good news for Barca fans as Messi is stepping up his recovery from a knee ligament injury suffered in a match against Las Palmas in late September. Unfortunately, the Argentinian has been ruled for the match against Real Madrid next month.

Whereas, club captain Andres Iniesta started his first match on Tuesday against BATE in the Champions League Match Day 5 encounter since picking up an injury at the end of September. Club manager Enrique has now confirmed that Rakitic will not be playing alongside Iniesta in midfield and has insisted that he is a major doubt for El Clasico due to his muscular injury.

“Rakitic's injury disrupts our plans because of his quality and because it's going to be a tough game against Villarreal,” he said in an interview.

“We have not had much luck with injuries and we want to have him back as soon as possible.”

“He is definitely going to miss the Villareal game and then we will see how it goes.”

“The priority is not that he is ready for a specific game but that he recovers properly. He is an important loss as the match against Villarreal is more than difficult.”

Enrique satisfied with team’s performance against BATE

Enrique reflected on the encounter with BATE on Wednesday night and the manager was happy with the team’s overall performance. It was Neymar and Luis Suarez who stepped up yet again for the Blaugrana. The Brazil captain scored the opener from the penalty spot after 30 minutes.

“These types of games come with obvious difficulties. The team remained focused throughout and kept the opposition under pressure in their own half,” he said.

“We improved after the break in terms of losing fewer balls in the opposition's half and having more fluid movement in the final third.”

“Generally I think we played well, obviously we could have been better and a lot worse.”

“Maybe we lacked better link-up play in the final third but at the same time the opposition did not cause us problems.”

“We played better in the second half where we moved the ball around well and put them under a lot of pressure.”