Ivan Rakitic has declared that Barcelona are the best team in the world after Luis Enrique’s side staged a scarcely believable comeback against Paris Saint-Germain last night to progress to the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
The odds were stacked against Barcelona going into the game at the Nou Camp given that they had been thrashed 4-0 in the first leg, a deficit that no side had ever managed to come back from in Europe’s elite club competition.
Barcelona, though, achieved the seemingly impossible as they thrashed PSG 6-1 on the night and won 6-5 on aggregate and Enrique’s team will now be full of confidence going into the latter stages of the competition.
Rakitic told BT Sport: “No, I cannot believe it. It was really impossible. 15-20 minutes after the game, it is crazy and
unbelievable.
“Thank you to the team, to the people around the club and the fans. It was a really special day and it is hard to say something.
“The first game in Paris was hard for us, a lot of people spoke hard with our team but the reaction was special. It is history. We want to keep going on.
“We had to believe. 4-0 was hard, but it is football. We saw it in the Super Bowl, what is possible in sport. Today was crazy. This is Barcelona, the best team in the world and we want to continue our dream in the Champions League.”
Luis Suarez put Barcelona ahead, with Layvin Kurzawa’s own goal putting the Spanish side two goals up on the night before Lionel Messi added a third.
Edinson Cavani scored to give PSG confidence that they would still prevail in the overall tie, but Barcelona kept pushing forwards, with Neymar hitting a brace before Sergi Roberto, remarkably, hit the decisive goal in the dying moments.
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