Barcelona much more than Messi, Neymar & Suarez: Villarreal coach

TIL Desk Sports/ After their 1-4 defeat, Villarreal coach Fran Escriba praised FC Barcelona saying that the Catalan club is much more than Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luiz Suarez. Neymar and Suarez scored one goal each while Messi netted a brace on Saturday to claim a comfortable win at home against Villarreal, who are battling for a top-four finish.

Former Santos star Neymar opened the scoring for the hosts but Cedric Bakambu equalised after half an hour at the Camp Nou Stadium. Messi then scored the first goal through a deflection and after that further goals from Luis Suarez and a Messi penalty (his 35th league goal of the campaign) sealed the win.

“Barcelona are much more than their front three, even if they didn’t have Messi, Suarez and Neymar they would still be an excellent team,” Escriba said. Commenting on the game, Villarreal said: “Barcelona’s third goal did us a lot of damage, we believed we could hold on and then get a positive result as long as the score was only 2-1 but after they scored their third anything we could possibly have achieved was gone.”