Barcelona produced a dogged performance to secure a 1-0 victory over Benfica on Wednesday, and at the heart of this was midfield maestro Pedri. The 22-year-old has been in sensational form this season, and his latest strong showing came in the Portuguese capital.
It was a relentless performance from Pedri, who ran the show in midfield despite there being one less Barcelona player in the middle of the park after Dani Olmo was withdrawn to allow Ronald Araujo to come on after the red card. As per MD, he expressed a lot of delight with the display that he and his teammates produced against Benfica.
“What the team achieved today after the sending off has a lot of merit. Today we were able to defend and take advantage of the chances we had with Raphinha, Lamine and Robert. Balde looked exhausted and everything was going up for me, but I knew that I had to run like the best because we had to keep the score for the second leg.”
Barcelona played with 10 men for over 70 minutes, although Pedri believes that Pau Cubarsi should not have been sent off – not because of the challenge the young defender made, but because he thinks that Frenkie de Jong was fouled in the build-up by Benfica striker Vangelis Pavlidis.
“We believe that the striker committed a foul before.”
Pedri won the MVP award from UEFA, but he could not help paying tribute to Wojciech Szczesny after the Polish goalkeeper’s sensational performance between the sticks at the Estadio da Luz, during which he produced eight important saves.
“It was his best game. The last time we played here, things didn’t go well for him and today he saved us many chances, especially at the start of the game. Under the sticks he is very big.”
