DALLAS — FC Barcelona midfielder Andrés Iniesta believes the 4-1 loss on Wednesday to CD Guadalajara, the most lopsided loss for the defending European champions in the Pep Guardiola era, was a warning for the Catalan side.
“We didn’t do the things really well and the result says it,” he said in a press conference Thursday at the team hotel here. “We try to get better in each game, although sometimes things don’t turn out the way we want it. It was a warning. We hope in the next game we can change this taste in our month that the games have left as far as the last two results.”
That next game comes on Saturday at Cowboys Stadium against Mexican side Club América (4 p.m. ET, ESPN and ESPN Deportes). But Iniesta is more concerned about his team than the opposition. And that’s not just player speak by the 2010 World Cup champion.
“Each year it gets more complicated,” Iniesta said. “The other teams prepare much better, but I don’t see that they can be better [than us]. We just have to look for the motivations and goals to try to outdo ourselves, which is what we’re doing now and what we’ve done in the past.”
It’s been a subpar start to the preseason for FC Barcelona standards, as they’ve compiled a 1-2-2 record, fielding several young players from the club’s reserve team given several injuries and absences.
There’s not much time to right the ship. The América match represents the final exhibition for Barcelona before the start of their season in the Spanish Supercopa against Real Madrid on Aug. 14.
“We have to prepare ourselves for this [Spanish Supercopa],” Iniesta said. “Train better. Play better. It’s around the corner, but our minds should be thinking of nothing but doing better.
“We can’t let yesterday’s result [vs. Chivas] become a burden for us. … We didn’t do well and starting from there, we have to work very hard to get better.”
