Paris Saint-Germain boss Laurent Blanc conceded that Barcelona were far superior in Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final clash.
Two goals from Luis Suarez and an early strike from Neymar saw the Catalans register a 3-1 win, Jeremy Mathieu putting through his own goal for the Ligue 1 outfit’s consolation, but Blanc refused to blame the defeat on the absence of some key players.
“I’m not going to start making excuses about us being depleted. I’m not doing that. We put a team out there but Barcelona dominated us,” he told reporters post-match.
“We’ve got six days until the second leg, with a League game in between, so it’s a short week for the players to recover.
“I thought Barca were fitter than us because we had some players who were not 100 per cent and there were a lot of absentees, although that should have been a motivation.
“However, we never controlled the ball well enough and Barca were superior in almost every department.
“We’ll have players back from suspension next week and that’s an incentive, so we’ll try to put on a better performance than we did tonight.
“They were better than us and scored three times and we’ll hopefully show a different PSG at the Camp Nou next week and achieve a different result.
“It didn’t end up as it might have done tonight but my team is very disappointed with the way things went.
“We looked as if we gave Barcelona the kind of game they wanted to play,” he added.
