Antonio Conte admits his players will ‘suffer’ at the hands of Barcelona and Lionel Messi

Antonio Conte admits his Chelsea players are preparing to ‘suffer’ against Barcelona and has described Lionel Messi as the world’s best player.

Antonio Conte admits Chelsea will ‘suffer’ against Barcelona. (Reuters)

Chelsea host Barcelona at Stamford Bridge in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Tuesday evening. The La Liga leaders are among the favourites to win the competition this season and Conte admits his players must find a way to succeed without dominating the game. Messi, meanwhile, has failed to scored in his eight appearances against Chelsea, although Conte backs the Argentine to cause his side problems at Stamford Bridge. Asked how Chelsea can stop Messi, Conte replied: ‘This is a good question. we are talking about the best player in the world, Messi has the capacity to solve the situation, to create a chance when you are not seeing the chance to score.

Conte is wary of the threat from Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez. 

‘This means that this player we are talking about a fantastic player, for sure, we must pay great attention but not only to Messi but Luis Suarez is a fantastic striker. ‘The whole team is very dangerous, in this case we have to try to work together to try to stop Barcelona, Messi, Suarez, [Andres] Iniesta… the whole Barcelona team. ‘We have to work very hard, we have to know during the game we must be prepared to suffer, but at the same time we must have the idea that in every moment we can go straight to try to score.

We must have ambition to try to play our football. We know Barcelona’s characteristics, they like to have possession of the ball, they like to dominate the game. ‘In every game they are able to create many chances to score, for this reason we must be prepared to suffer, suffer without the ball, be compact, don’t lose our heads during the game, then to try with the ball what we know, what we’ve tried during the training.’