Garcia Warning: Barcelona’s Top Priority This Season is the Champions League

Barcelona may just have wrapped up La Liga over the weekend, but Liverpool shouldn’t count on any kind of a celebratory hangover impacting their opponents on Wednesday evening in the Champions League semi-final.

At least that’s former Red and Blaugrana Luis Garcia’s take, as he believes Barcelona’s top priority this season is and has always been Europe—that they will be happy to have won the league again, but this next game was always the priority.

“At the start of the season they would have been setting out to get the Champions League trophy,” Garcia told The Echo. “They are a club that wants to win this trophy—especially now after missing out on the trophy for the last few seasons.”

While Barcelona have been dominant in La Liga in recent years, Real Madrid have continued to rack up the Champions League victories, taking their inflated total in that competition up to 13 while Barcelona are sat back on five titles.

Barcelona had the league wrapped up for some time now, and from the start it was Europe and not Spain where they will have had their focus. Still, even a focused and at their best Barcelona is a side Liverpool can match up against.

With the Reds going toe-to-toe with Manchester City in England and sweeping aside Bayern Munich in the knockout rounds, they’re just as capable as Barca of turning their own five Champions League titles into six this season.

“They are a very strong team, [but] every team is so strong and it will be difficult for anyone to progress,” Garcia added. “Both teams could beat anybody on the day. It’s going to be a really big challenge and it is difficult to predict.”