An excîŧing staŧemeƞt from Koeman about Messi after falاing into a draw against Bilbao

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Barcelona coach Ronald Koeman admitted, after the 1-1 draw with Athletic Bilbao in the Spanish League, that the rival teams dared to attack his club and play with greater courage after the departure of the club’s historic scorer, Lionel Messi.

Memphis Depay scored a late goal with a powerful shot to nullify Bilbao’s advantage with a header from Anigo Martinez to give Barcelona a draw, but Koeman confirmed that the club is still affected by the departure of captain Messi, who moved two weeks ago. to Paris. Saint-Germain after 21 years at the club.

“I don’t want to talk about the same thing, but we are talking about the best player in the world and opponents are always afraid when Messi is present,” Koeman told reporters.

He added: We are similarly affected, if you pass the ball to Messi, he does not usually lose it. We can feel his absence. We knew it, but we couldn’t change anything.

Barcelona started the season strong without Messi and beat Real Sociedad 4-2 last week, but it went through a difficult test and it was not the best match during the draw with Bilbao, which imposed its domination for long periods.

“I think we faced great difficulties at the beginning of the match,” the Dutch coach said. We put them under a lot of pressure and played very well, we weren’t able to be patient during the match, but I would like to commend our style after being late. I think a draw is a fair result, because if you play like we do, you will always have problems. I have no complaints about the result.