BARCELONA
\nBarcelona coach Xavi Hernandez said beating Napoli to reach the Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday was one of his finest moments in his post.
\nThe Spanish champions won 3-1 at the Olympic Stadium to seal a 4-2 aggregate win against last year\u2019s Serie A winners, returning to the last eight for the first time since 2020.
\n\u201cThere has been a lot of unfair criticism, (that we were) the joke of the Champions League, we had to play with that pressure,\u201d Xavi told a news conference.
\n\u201cWe had to be better than Napoli and we were, it\u2019s a more than deserved qualification, it\u2019s one of my best moments as Barcelona coach.\u201d
\nThe coach said he would not change his mind about leaving at the end of the season, a decision he took in January. Since then the team have gone nine matches unbeaten.
\nCentre-back Pau Cubarsi, 17, was given the player of the match award and Xavi lavished praise on the young defender, key in recent weeks.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s a very rational kid, he\u2019s got a lot of brains, he\u2019s patient, he\u2019s very humble, he wants to improve,\u201d said Xavi.
\n\u201cHis sudden emergence is wonderful for Barcelona and Spanish football \u2014 we\u2019re looking at a top-level defender for years to come.\u201d
\nLike Xavi, Cubarsi said this was a match to remember. \u201cThis has been one of the best days of my life,\u201d Cubarsi told Movistar.
\n\u201cThe team deserves this player of the match trophy, I\u2019m so happy, but we\u2019re a group.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BARCELONA Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez said beating Napoli to reach the Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday was one of his finest moments in his post. The Spanish champions won 3-1 at the Olympic Stadium to seal a 4-2 aggregate win against last year\u2019s Serie A winners, returning to the last eight for the first time …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61956,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61939\/revisions\/61956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}