Messi blasts 'weak' team after Barcelona loses league title
Barcelona: After seeing Barcelona's Spanish league title defense come to a disappointing and meek end, Lionel Messi didn't hold back.
Messi blasted his team for being weak after Real Madrid wrested the league title away from Barcelona for the first time in three years on Thursday, and said it must quickly change course to have a chance at winning the Champions League.
Real Madrid clinched the title by beating Villarreal 2-1 but would have lifted the trophy regardless of that result after Barcelona slumped to a 2-1 loss to an Osasuna side that finished with 10 men.
This game represents the entire year. We have been an erratic and weak team," Messi said in a rare TV interview just after the final whistle sounded at an empty Camp Nou.
Madrid did its part by winning all its matches, which is impressive, but we also helped them to win this league. We have to be critical of how we have played, starting with the players, and the rest of the club.
Barcelona led the league by two points over Madrid when the league was stopped in mid-March for three months while Spain's reined in its coronavirus outbreak.
Madrid returned to the competition motivated and in shape, reeling off 10 straight wins.
Barcelona looked flat, drew three matches to lose the lead, and on Thursday hit a new low when it lost its first home match since November 2018.
The feeling on this team is that it tries, but that it cannot get the job done, Messi said.
Today in the first half they were better than we were and it seems we have to fall behind to react like we tried to do in the second half.
Messi scored his league-leading 23rd goal from a free kick in the second half to cancel out Jos Arna z's opener.
And Barcelona got a man advantage when the visitors lost substitute Enric Gallego to a straight red card for bloodying the mouth of Clement Lenglet with an elbow to the face in the 77th.
But Osasuna's Roberto Torres scored in stoppage time with Barcelona pushing forward searching for a late goal.
I said it some time ago, that playing like this we had no chance of winning the Champions League, and it turns out we didn't even have enough to win la Liga, Messi said.
We need to take a breather, let some air in, and clean out minds of all that has happened since December. Barcelona must regroup for the second leg of its Champions League round-of-16 match against Napoli on Aug. 8. The first leg finished 1-1 in Italy.
Playing like this we will lose against Napoli," Messi said.
We have to start from zero in the Champions League and blame ourselves for what went wrong.
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Another North Goa nightclub sealed; Kejriwal says corruption led to fire tragedy
Panaji (PTI): As part of a crackdown against tourist establishments violating laws and safety norms in the aftermath of the Arpora fire tragedy, Goa authorities on Saturday sealed a renowned club at Vagator and revoked the fire department NOC of another club.
Cafe CO2 Goa, located on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea at Vagator beach in North Goa, was sealed. The move came two days after Goya Club, also in Vagator, was shut down for alleged violations of rules.
Elsewhere, campaigning for local body polls, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said the fire incident at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub at Arpora, which claimed 25 lives on December 6, happened because the BJP government in the state was corrupt.
An inspection of Cafe CO2 Goa by a state government-appointed team revealed that the establishment, with a seating capacity of 250, did not possess a no-objection certificate (NOC) of the Fire and Emergency Services Department. The club, which sits atop Ozrant Cliff, also did not have structural stability, the team found.
The Fire and Emergency Services on Saturday also revoked the NOC issued to Diaz Pool Club and Bar at Anjuna as the fire extinguishers installed in the establishment were found to be inadequate, said divisional fire officer Shripad Gawas.
A notice was issued to Nitin Wadhwa, the partner of the club, he said in the order.
Campaigning at Chimbel village near Panaji in support of his party's Zilla Panchayat election candidate, Aam Aadmi Party leader Kejriwal said the nightclub fire at Arpora happened because of the "corruption of the Pramod Sawant-led state government."
"Why this fire incident happened? I read in the newspapers that the nightclub had no occupancy certificate, no building licence, no excise licence, no construction licence or trade licence. The entire club was illegal but still it was going on," he said.
"How could it go on? Couldn't Pramod Sawant or anyone else see it? I was told that hafta (bribe) was being paid," the former Delhi chief minister said.
A person can not work without bribing officials in the coastal state, Kejriwal said, alleging that officers, MLAs and even ministers are accepting bribes.
