Guardiola impressed by Barcelona's new generation
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
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Josep Guardiola was impressed by the performances of his younger players against FC BATE Borisov, whose coach Viktor Goncharenko admitted his side were not ready for FC Barcelona.
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Josep Guardiola, Barcelona coach
Who knows what the future holds but this club has made an important effort in retaining the services of Marc Bartra, Isaac Cuenca, Sergi Roberto, Marc Muniesa and Rafa Alcántara [Rafinha]. The club will most likely depend on them and they are a real generation of players.
[Competing in the second division] will help to keep their feet on the ground. A lot of the players out there tonight lost 3-0 to Elche at the weekend. They know about the demands here but playing within such a calm environment is easy. The difficult part is going back to playing at grounds in a division down and maintaining that level. But I am very happy with them.
I would like to thank those from the first team who played tonight; [José] Pinto, [Andreu] Fontás, Pedro [Rodríguez] and Thiago [Alcántara]. It's not easy playing with all of your regular team-mates watching from the stands. Tomorrow we will begin to think about the game [against Real Madrid CF on Saturday]. We will try to make sure that everyone is proud of us.
Viktor Goncharenko, BATE coach
We have had a very tough season and that game finished it. We have no strength left. We were not ready for this game. Our display was very uncoordinated and that was why we could not stop Barcelona.
