Barça coach Koeman on Rayo win, De Jong's goals & Riqui Puig
The Dutchman was happy with his side's performance as they progressed in the Copa
Ronald Koeman was satisified after his Barcelona side beat Rayo Vallecano 2-1 to make the last eight of the Copa del Rey on Wednesday.
Koeman congratulated his players for coming from behind, saying "in general I am really happy. We let them off in the first half, there was a possible penalty... and in the second half we had the character to turn the game around with quality in the goals. You always have to suffer at the end, but in general the team was very good."
The winning goal was scored by Frenkie de Jong after Lionel Messi equalised. It was De Jong's fourth goal in 2021.
"Frenkie has a lot of quality to help to build the play but he also has had to give the team more in attack," Koeman added. "He helps us in the final third, getting to the area and at the moment he's scoring goals. He had to score more than once a season. He's more complete, despite still trying to help Busquets build. He gets forward, offers depth and is helping with goals."
Koeman booked!
The Barça coach was not happy with the performance of the referee and explained that "he showed me a yellow a card for saying it was a foul, if you're getting out a yellow card for that, where are we going?! As for the possible penalties, there was VAR, so possiblity they weren't..."
Koeman said the plan now is to take things "game by game. We will try to win all the games to move up the table and cut the gap on the leaders. We have the Champions League, the Copa and we want to keep going and show our mentality."
The Dutch coach praised the effort of his players in recent weeks after "eight games away from home, with long journeys, it's been really hard. It's a shame about the final two minutes of the Supercopa, but we're still in the Copa and we're getting better in the league."
Riqui & Trincao
Finally, on Francisco Trincao and Riqui Puig, who started vs. Rayo, Koeman said: "I think they both played well. Trincao above all created a lot of danger in the first half, there were various moments...
"And Riqui was good, above all playing through the lines... The pitch wasn't great for his game but he did well. We made the changes to freshen things up."
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