Losada vaunts Barcelona poise after Slavia success

Leading 1-0 from the first leg of their tie against SK Slavia Praha, FC Barcelona killed off their UEFA Women's Champions League round of 32 tie at home, Alexia Putellas, Sonia Bermúdez and substitute Ana Romero scoring the goals. Forward Vicky Losada says her team were always confident, with Slavia captain Blanka Pěničková happy to concede her side had been outclassed.

Vicky Losada, Barcelona forward 
This team has never had any doubts, we have always believed in how we play, although of course we knew that we couldn't go out and play in a relaxed manner because we know that in football scorelines can change very quickly.

We knew we wanted to go all out from the off and give everything we could and the sooner we could widen the gap between the two teams, the better. They marked us closely at the start, we made a few misplaced passes which made it harder to get into their area, but once we got the goal I think we played better.

Jenni Hermoso, Barcelona forward
They came out looking for a goal but I think we played better and we knew the goal was going to come soon or later. We scored first and then they dropped down a notch and that was when we were able to play with more freedom and in the end score three goals.

We dropped our heads a bit at the start of the second half; they took advantage of that and were very close to scoring but luckily our goalkeeper [Laura Ràfols] did brilliantly.

Xavier Llorens, Barcelona coach
I was very pleased with our first half performance, but not happy with the second half – it was very end-to-end, and that's dangerous. The players were euphoric when they got into the dressing room at half-time and they went out to enjoy themselves in the second half, so it was all about the indivuduals and not so much about the team, which meant we had to work harder and run more.

There’s no reason to blame anyone personally for that; it happens when you are winning, you are playing at home, and the game is on TV, but I don't want us to make that mistake again.

Blanka Pěničková, Slavia midfielder
Barcelona are one of the best teams in Europe and today we saw how good they really are. They are on another level to us. Conceding two goals in the space of around ten minutes made things very difficult. We didn't want to come out and attack because it's very difficult to sustain so our aim was to keep things tight and attack occasionally, but that changed with the first goal.

Anton Mišovec, Slavia coach
We were able to create three or four good chances, so that was an improvement on the first game, but Barcelona were better at moving the ball around and they didn't give the ball away much.

They scored two goals really quickly and we conceded from situations we can normally cope with in our domestic league. But Barcelona have a different level of skill and speed.

It is great for us to play against a team like Barcelona. We haven't played at this level for ten years so we hope we can use this experience in our other difficult matches.