Barcelona deserved to beat Villarreal: Enrique

Luis Enrique believes Barcelona did enough to beat Villarreal in their 1-1 La Liga draw on Sunday.

Barca were left to rely on a 90th-minute Lionel Messi free-kick to take a share of the spoils at the renamed Estadio de la Ceramica, with Nicola Sansone having earlier opened the scoring.

The visitors saw two penalty shouts turned down during a frantic period of the second half in which the home side also had calls for a spot-kick waved away. And Luis Enrique, whose side were beaten 2-1 by Athletic Bilbao in their opening match of 2017, was disappointed not to come away with maximum points.

"The team deserved more, we deserved to win, but football is not always fair," he said.

"Villarreal are a team that try to play, they have quality players. They know their style of play well, with and without the ball.

"We knew about the difficulty of the game against Villarreal, but we deserved to win. I have nothing more to say to my players, we played a great game.

"The same feelings that I had in Bilbao, [we played] even better in fact. We created many chances against the team who has conceded the fewest goals in La Liga, although we were not as accurate as we could have been in the final metres."

Third-placed Barca now sit five points adrift of leaders Real Madrid, who have a game in hand.

"There is plenty of the league still to play, we will definitely be fighting for it," added Luis Enrique. "We must continue improving and be even stronger to fix this form.

Source: Goal.com