Xavi admits he’s worried after Barcelona’s Champions League defeat to Antwerp

Barcelona coach Xavi admitted he’s worried about his team after Wednesday’s defeat at Antwerp in the Champions League.

The visitors had been expected to win comfortably against Antwerp, who hadn’t managed a point in the group stages before the match, but went on to lose 3-2.

Here’s what Xavi makes of it all:

“I’m worried, of course. That’s normal. The team is uncomfortable right now. We’re on a bad run – two negative results [in a row],” he told reporters.

“We can be self-critical. It’s time to improve. Our rivals make chances and threaten, we have to do more of that ourselves – it’s costing us.

“We have achieved our objective by winning the group, we won away to our toughest rivals, Porto, but we need to recuperate the good sensations we had earlier in the group. We need to break this dynamic.

“We are in the draw on Monday as group winners. It’ll be interesting to see who we draw but it’s time to look at ourselves as much who we’ll play the next round.

“It was a difficult and tough match. They played aggressively and were good defensively. We didn’t play that well. We were not comfortable. But the first goal was to be in the Round of 16 and there we are. We look forward to the draw.”

Xavi and Barcelona are enduring a really sticky patch, with the defeat following on from another loss at the weekend to Girona.

Barca now head home for a clash with Valencia at the weekend, a game they really can’t afford to lose now.