Barcelona host Benfica on Tuesday knowing they must avoid defeat to ensure their hopes of reaching the Champions League knockout stages remain in their own hands.

 


Barcelona host Benfica on Tuesday knowing they must avoid defeat to ensure their hopes of reaching the Champions League knockout stages remain in their own hands.



In order to do that, new coach Xavi Hernandez will need to find a way to stop rising Uruguayan star Darwin Nunez, who scored twice in Benfica's 3-0 drubbing of the Catalans in late September.


This is a problem, however, that could have been avoided had the club's board been able to heed the advice of their former striker Luis Suarez.


While Darwin still played for Almeria in the Spanish second tier, Suarez urged the Barca hierarchy to sign his compatriot.


"I have 15 years of international experience, so I know a thing or two about forwards," Suarez revealed. "And I told them, 'pay attention to this one, he's very good, he has very interesting things'."


Barcelona did push for a deal. But amid the financial crisis the club still faces now, ultimately they could not come to an agreement and watched Benfica spend a club record transfer fee of 24m euros (£20m) to take the forward to Lisbon in September 2020.


"Barcelona, indeed, showed a strong interest in Darwin. We discussed how the operation would be and outlined it, but they were already going through a tough time back then and that complicated things," Almeria's sporting director Joao Goncalves explained to BBC Sport.

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