Luis Suarez warns Barcelona: Liverpool are more than just Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino

Ben Hayward6 May 2019

Luis Suarez has warned Barcelona that Liverpool will be dangerous despite the absence of both Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino for Tuesday's Champions League semi-final second leg.

Reds manager Jurgen Klopp confirmed on Monday that neither Salah or Firmino will be available for the clash at Anfield on Tuesday night, in which Liverpool already have a mountain to climb after the first-leg result in Barcelona.

However, Suarez believes that despite that 3-0 win at Camp Nou, the Catalans will need to play even better than they did last week in order to advance.

“For them, they (Salah and Firmino) are big losses,” Suarez said in the pre-match press conference on Monday. “For us, it doesn’t change anything.

"We know how difficult it is to play in a stadium and against a team with so much history. They have other players, the majority are international players and we have to have a lot of respect for them.”

And asked specifically about the Egyptian forward later on, he said: “Salah is very important, he was among the best three in the world (in the Ballon d’Or vote). But they also have [Xherdan] Shaqiri, [Daniel] Sturridge. They make the difference and we have to be attentive.

“They have a lot of good players. The result in the first leg is misleading because of the chances they had and the ones we had.

"It’s a Champions League semi-final, against a finalist from last year and a team playing for the Premier League.

“We played a great game the other day. In this one, we’ll have to play even better to go through.”

Suarez also stressed the importance of avoiding an end-to-end match - which would suit Liverpool - and revealed that the Barca squad have looked at what they did wrong in last week’s first leg, in which the game was fairly even until two late Lionel Messi goals gave the Blaugrana a comprehensive win in the end.

In Pictures | Barcelona vs Liverpool, Champions League | 01/05/2019

1/106

“We shouldn’t get into an end-to-end game,” he said. “They make the difference on the break. We have studied our mistakes at Camp Nou.

"We lost a lot of balls, we let them control the game and that made us nervous. The coach changed the system and we were better in the second half.”

Despite reaching the semi-finals for the first time since 2014-15, there continues to be much talk of Barcelona’s Champions League elimination last season, when they threw away a three-goal advantage in a 3-0 loss at Roma which saw the Catalans crash out on away goals.

“We have to be conscious that, as well as our good result, we also had a big blow last season with a good lead (against Roma).

"We have thought about that a lot and we know they have a plus: their fans. Playing at Anfield is to play with another player for what the fans transmit to the Liverpool players.”

And he added: “You learn from your mistakes. A year ago we were relaxed ahead of Rome.

"If you are distracted for a minute in the Champions League, the other team scores. We are aware of what happened, so that this year it won’t happen again.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in