In a rather surprising outcome, Athletico Madrid took out Barcelona from the Champions League with an aggregate of scoreboard of 3-2. This means that Athletic Madrid will be competing in the semi-finals of the European competition and now the only major piece of silverware that Barcelona has a chance of winning is the Spanish league.
They are still favourites to do just that, with even the best apps for sports betting only able to find odds of 4/6 on a Barcelona win, though their strangle-hold may be about to get loosened if they can’t bounce back from the Champions League loss.
Spain’s Vicente del Bosque recently talked about this result and stated that it can positively affect the Spanish national football team as the Barcelona players now have more time to rest before having to play with the Spanish national side.
With the likes of: Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Sergio Roberto, Barcelona is the team that has the most amount of players of the national side and taking into consideration the fact that Barcelona was knocked out from the Champions League sooner than initially expected, it gives them more resting days.
“These players are used to exerting themselves in the top competitions so it wouldn’t necessarily have been a setback but now they will arrive earlier and will have more time off and that’s a bit better for us,” Del Bosque told reporters.
Vicente del Bosque has the task of pushing Spain past the group stages of the 2018 World Cup qualification which will begin on September 5 with the Spanish national side facing off with Liechtenstein. Spain was pitted in Group G along with Italy, Albania, Israel, Macedonia and Liechtenstein; the heavy favorites of advancing through this group are Italy and Spain.
The 65 year old manager of Spain continued on talking about how impressively the Spanish clubs have been performing at the big stage and this is evident by the fact that there are 2 Spanish clubs competing in the Champions League while the other 2 are German and English.
Real Madrid, Athletic Madrid, Manchester City and Bayern Munich are the remaining teams that are fighting in the Champions League.
