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The head coach, Dutchman Frank Rijkaard, announced that his team faces a serious test in the UEFA Champions League semi-final, where the Catalonia super club will meet with his former club "Milan".
"I think it will be a very interesting match against a very strong team," said F.Rijkaard, who twice became a European champion in the line-up of "Milan" on Wednesday. "In recent years, they have been demonstrating a very high level of play, but we are also very strong."
"Barcelona" made it to the semi-finals by defeating Lisbon's "Benfica" 2-0 in the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinals at home.
F.Rijkaard stated that the match against his former team, now managed by his former teammate on the field Carlo Ancelotti, does not evoke any feelings for him.
"Personally, it means nothing to me, because I have played against 'Milan' before as a player and as a coach," said the Dutchman. "It will be a very tough match between two very strong teams."
Barcelona's coach explained why the team looked so nervous in the second leg against "Benfica" at the "Nou Camp" stadium.
"Benfica" has a very good reputation of playing well as the away team. They created several very dangerous attacks during the match, so the tension can be explained," said the Dutchman. "As long as the score was 1-0, we could never relax."
"We played very well in the first half, but in the second half, we played nervously. Although we were leading, at any moment everything could have changed drastically. I was very pleased when we scored the second goal and could relax," he added.
Barcelona failed to take advantage of a great opportunity to take the lead at the beginning of the match when Brazilian Ronaldinho missed an 11-meter penalty in the fifth minute.
However, the best player of the last year's World Cup corrected his mistake halfway through the first half and led the hosts to victory.
After the match, coach Ronald Koeman of the Netherlands said that the team was affected by tension.
"We had a hard time at the beginning of the match, played nervously, but later everything went better. We created several opportunities and could equalize the score, but we did not manage to use them," said R.Koeman.
Former Barcelona player was dissatisfied with the work of the referees in the matches and said that in both matches they were more favorable to Barcelona at decisive moments.
"Barca" is stronger because they won with an aggregate score, but we felt the referees were biased against us," said the Dutchman. "And it's already hard to play against 'Barcelona', even harder when you have to play against the referees. In the first leg, the referee did not award a penalty from eleven meters when a Barcelona player played with his hand in the penalty area, but today (Wednesday) in a similar situation, he awarded a penalty to our goal. Although the situations were identical, the referees interpreted them very differently."
