Barcelona captain, Lionel Messi cursed his side’s careless errors in their 3-2 defeat by Atletico Madrid on Thursday as they crashed out of the revamped Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia. The Spanish champions, who had two goals ruled out in the second half after VAR reviews, dominated the match and were leading 2-1 with 10 minutes left thanks to goals from Messi and Antoine Griezmann.
But it was Atletico who booked their place in Sunday’s final against Real Madrid, leveling thanks to a penalty from Alvaro Morata before Angel Correa struck the winner after Griezmann gave away possession. Alvaro Morata then restored parity to 2-2 from the penalty spot, and Atleti were unlucky not to receive another spot-kick in a frantic finale before Angel Correa scored the decisive goal four minutes from the end.
Talking to the media, Camp Nou based outfit’s captain spoke;
“It is a shame, we played a great game, after so long we felt good again, we were in control, dominated and attacked all the time.
‘We let it slip through certain mistakes when [Atletico] were already almost dead, in less than 10 minutes they turned round a game that we should have seen out.
It hurts because it is a title and we wanted to be in the final and win it, we showed a different side to what we have been showing recently against Espanyol and at the end of last year, we played a good game but sadly we couldn’t get the victory.”
Calling for the united front, Lionel Messi spoke not to commit the same mistakes in the other fixtures. He opined;
‘We have taken a step forward today despite the defeat but we are aware that we have not been doing things the way we want, we do not want to make these childish mistakes again.’
Atletico Madrid will face their arch-rivals Real Madrid in the finals of Super Cup de Espana on Sunday whereas Barcelona will go back to Spain in order to play their La Liga fixtures.
