Barcelona coach Gerardo Martino admitted his side may have taken their eye off the ball having already qualified for the round-of-16 of the UEFA Champions League as they lost for the first time this season 2-1 away to Ajax on Tuesday.
The Catalans were blown away by the hosts in the first half as goals from Thulani Serero and Danny Hoessen gave them a 2-0 lead.
Barcelona were handed a lifeline at the beginning of the second period when Joel Veltman was sent off for bringing down Neymar inside the penalty area and Xavi halved the deficit from the resulting penalty.
Photo: AFP
However, even against 10 men, Barca failed to find an equalizer as they slipped to their first defeat in 21 games since Martino took charge in the summer.
“It is always possible to lose and we need to analyze more how the team played in the first 45 minutes than the defeat. That is when Ajax made the difference and won the game,” Martino told Canal Plus. “We lacked intensity, it is clear that they were quicker, more precise, superior in the one against ones, they were better in all aspects. When a team plays well like Ajax did and you lack this intensity, the opponent is always going to win.”
Barca still top Group H and need just a point against already eliminated Celtic in the final game at the Camp Nou to ensure they finish as group winners, but Martino was frustrated not to have secured top spot having played for more than 40 minutes against 10 men.
Photo: Reuters
“Probably there is a situation where we thought we were qualified and subconsciously relaxed a little,” he said. “We managed to qualify within four games and we would have liked to have secured first place today. With what I saw in the second half I thought we were going to do it, but you can’t let 45 minutes go by as we did.”
Barcelona were without four first-team regulars, including World Player of the Year Lionel Messi, due to injury.
However, defender Gerard Pique insisted there was no excuse for their shambolic display before the break.
“It was the worst first half that we have played. It was horrible and there is no excuse,” defender Pique told TV3. “In the second [half], with a player more, we couldn’t create danger. We need to improve and reflect a lot. Barcelona cannot show this image of itself.”
Xavi echoed his teammate’s sentiments that the loss of Messi and goalkeeper Victor Valdes cannot be used as an excuse, with both set to be sidelined for the rest of the year.
“They are important players and we miss them, but that wasn’t the main reason why we lost,” Xavi said. “We didn’t play well enough to win. They pressed us very high and beat us to most of the contested balls. It is very difficult to win like that and even more so away from home in the Champions League.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier