Barcelona boss Ernesto Valverde on defeat: 'These things can happen'

Posted Thursday, September 27, 2018 by ESPN

Barcelona boss Ernesto Valverde on defeat: 'These things can happen'
Lionel Messi reacts after missing a chance in Barcelona's 2-1 loss to Leganes on Wednesday. David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images

Ernesto Valverde was at a loss to explain Barcelona's shock defeat to Leganes on Wednesday as their unbeaten start to the season came to an abrupt end at Butarque.

Barca weren't beaten in La Liga last season until their 37th and penultimate game when they had already wrapped up the league title, but it's taken just six games for them to lose in the new campaign.

Philippe Coutinho gave the Catalans a first-half lead against Leganes but two goals in two second-half minutes earned the home side their first win of the season and moved them off the bottom of the table.

Nabil El Zhar headed in at the far post to bring the scores level in the 52nd minute before a Gerard Pique mistake teed up Oscar Rodriguez to score the winner 68 seconds later.

It extended Barca's mini-slump after they were held by Girona at the weekend at Camp Nou, which saw their four-game winning streak in the league come to an end.

"How do I explain it? This is football and these things can happen," Valverde said in his post-game news conference. "Sometimes it's difficult to explain what happens in a game.

"You have a game under control and then the opposition can do damage like [Leganes did] in one minute. Then they sat back and made it hard for us to create chances. There were a lot of bodies and it was tough.

"We had a double chance, but it wasn't to be. We didn't create the chances we would have liked. That's five points dropped in three days and it's difficult to explain."

Valverde defended his decision to make changes, with both Jordi Alba and Luis Suarez left on the bench, replaced by Thomas Vermaelen and Munir El-Haddadi, respectively.

The Barca coach also said it was "opportunistic" to suggest the team's lack of depth was to blame for their poor run of form given the season is still so young.

Midfielder Sergio Busquets, meanwhile, refused to criticise teammate Pique for gifting the winning goal to Leganes.

Pique, who made mistakes in the build-up to both Girona goals on Sunday, passed the ball straight to Oscar, who slammed past Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

Goalkeeper Ivan Cuellar made a stunning double save from Coutinho and Ivan Rakitic late on but Barca failed to create much else as Leganes closed out the win in a relatively comfortable fashion.

"We're a team," Busquets said. "We win and we lose together. We have to look at what went wrong as a team. We play with 11 players and we all lost the game.

"There are no excuses. It wasn't about individuals. We made it easy for them and they took advantage of that, turning the game around in two minutes.

"Then we struggled to create chances because they shut up shop. The worrying thing is conceding so many goals. We have to be more solid."