The match
at Camp Nou was awaited by all Belarusian football supporters as a climax of
BATE season. The Yellow-Blues had a chance to do correction to both their loss
here in 2011 0-4 to Barcelona reserves and a 0-2 loss at Borisov-Arena two
weeks ago.
BATE Head
coach Aliaksandr Yermakovich went for a single forward formation with Dzmitry
Mazaleuski up front. Ihar Stasevich and Maksim Valadzko supported him on flanks
and Mikhail Hardzeichuk was the one behind.
In the
first half the Catalan side was dominant in ball possession and created many
good opportunities, but BATE kept calm and carried on in defence. And even
created a couple of good opportunities. Ter Stegen had to dive to save Ihar
Stasevich set-piece. Hardzeichuk was also quite active up front.
Nevertheless
Barca scored when Munir El Haddadi earned a penalty fouled by Mladenović.
Neymar converted the spot-kick with confidence.
The second
half started with a similar situation when Stasevich was fouled by Adriano, but
the referees' whistle was silent at that moment.
Blaugrana
doubled the lead courtesy of Luis Suarez amazing technique. The Uruguayan
custodian did it with a short-range tip shot.
Barca had
several more opportunities to score the third goal, but Chernik was outstanding
in the goal and defence worked quite well. Still this was not enough to silence
Neymar. The Brazilian scored his second goal of the game with a perfect pass
from Suarez, thus setting the final score of the game.
The
Yellow-Blues will continue their Champions League adventure in the game against
Bayer Leverkusen. And on Sunday BATE will play last 2015 Vysshaya Liga game
against Slutsk at Gorodskoi.
Aliaksandr YERMAKOVICH (BATE Head
Coach):
- I
liked my team today better than in the game at Borisov-Arena. Today we had more
chances to score and deserved a goal. Of course Barcelona is a top team that is
very hard to oppose. You see that Neymar was fantastic today. That was a lesson
of top football for us. Now we have to concentrate on two remaining games. Both
are important for us. First of all we will try to do everything to win against
Bayer at home. We do want to make our supporters happy.
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