Brest coach Eric Roy explains why his team faces a more difficult game against Barcelona

Brest coach Eric Roy has warned his players that they must be wary of an injured beast when they face Barcelona at Montjuic on Tuesday night. The French team will face Hansi Flick’s side after picking up just one point in their last two games and showing poor performances in both games.

The Breton team is the surprise in the league phase with 10 points available so far. Roy will try to use this to his advantage.

“We are the surprise of the Champions League. We are now on the map. That’s something to be proud of. Nobody in France bet on us. We silenced the critics. We have ten points. That takes a lot of pressure off of us. We are facing a major challenge. It’s the kind of thing that makes us pinch ourselves. I told the players that we have to keep believing in ourselves.”

“We hope that we can continue to show what we can do against Barcelona. We’re going to face the European ogre and now he’s hurt. We will need a lot of resilience, but whatever happens, we will come out ahead. We don’t come as if we were friends playing a game. We have nothing to lose.”

He found that if they leaned back too much, it would do them more harm than good.

“We want to cause problems and put on a show. When we have the ball 20% of the time it becomes difficult to express ourselves. We don’t want to be a reactive team. Maybe Barca will force us to do that, but our desire is to cause them problems.”

Roy pointed to Celta Vigo and Real Sociedad as blueprints for tackling the Blaugrana formula, which until this month seemed more or less unstoppable.

“We watched the Celta and Real Sociedad games,” Roy told Diario AS, before discussing Barcelona’s now infamous top line.

“They play very closely together when pressing. They want to win the ball back very quickly. We know how they play. But then you have to be very precise with your passes. They are very vertical and attack deep. If we can’t predict that, we’re going to have problems.”

Roy also said that his team had already won the tactical battle but the game had not been played yet. Certainly they go into the game with little to lose and everything to gain. Barcelona are one point behind Brest and will be looking to consolidate their place in the top eight and thereby qualify for the round of 16.