FCBARCELONA.CAT

13.01.2010 23:59

Guardiola: "I’m so proud of my players"

Vanessa Forns

His team may have been knocked out of the Spanish Cup but Josep Guardiola is proud of the way they fell: “We’re not invincible. We had to lose some time”.

Speaking at the post match press conference the Barça manager was clearly disappointed at the result but absolved his players of any blame: “I have the feeling that I’ve failed them, that I have to take them further. I have the luck to manage some fantastic players. We shouldn’t go out in the R16. With this squad I have the obligation to do better. I missed something”.

"We have to learn"

He insisted that his players had approached the game with the correct attitude: “We played our game and kept trying until the end. I’m very proud of these players. I saw reactions in the dressing room that make me happy. It’s a good sign that a team doesn’t like to lose. We did well but we didn’t go through and that’s difficult to accept. When this happens we have to learn”.

Guardiola does not believe in chance and is convinced that for Barça not to be in the quarterfinals something must have gone wrong: “We looked good. We could have gone through but if we didn’t it’s because we did something wrong. We’ll try and correct it”.

Congratulations to Sevilla

Guardiola denied that the tie had been lost in the first leg and congratulated Sevilla on their victory: “They deserved to win the tie. They’re a marvellous team with a strong squad. The missing players weren’t noticed”.

The match

As for the match itself, Guardiola was less pleased with the first half performance believing that his players were in too much of a hurry to score. However, the second half performance was different matter and the team remained true to their style of football: “Now we have to recover for the future”.

Focussed on the league and Europe

Finally, he looked ahead to the rest of the season. “Let’s see how we react. We’re not used to having long weeks. I suppose we’ll be more rested though tiredness is in the head. We’ll have to accept it. Now I won’t have to rotate the squad so much. We’ll focus on the two competitions that are left to us”.