Also Messi was diving to the ground to win tackles
Barcelona mentor Ronald Koeman praised his side's relentless pressing after their 2-1 make an impression on Real Sociedad on Wednesday, when the Catalans finally came alive after a horrible start to the growing season. Real Sociedad started the night as La Liga leaders and got the lead through Willian Jose but Barca quickly overcame the first setback thanks to strikes from Jordi Alba and Frenkie de Jong before the break.
"The first one half was fantastic, we ought to have scored more goals. We had been intense, we set them under a whole lot of pressure and we ran ourselves into the surface," Koeman told a media conference.
"Real Sociedad are great on the ball but we retained robbing it away them, we pressed them so well. It had been an open video game because our opponents learn how to play extremely well but the video game belonged to us and it had been a deserved triumph."
Lionel Messi had a great off evening and missed several probabilities in addition to misplacing a number of key passes, but Koeman said he was happy with his captain's work level.
"Here is the team I want to find. Every player played out of their skin. The largest difference was our enjoy without the ball today, and Messi performed very hard due to that, pressing a lot, therefore did everybody else," he said.
"That was the frame of mind we have to possess when we don't have the ball."
Real Sociedad had been on a nine-game unbeaten run on the league if they attained the Camp Nou but they struggled to handle Barca, and coach Imanol Alguacil praised the Catalans because of their efforts.
"We saw the very best Barca we've seen for a long time, specifically defensively," he said.
"That speaks incredibly highly of them and the respect that they had for this video game. We hadn't experienced a Barca this aggressive for such a long time. Actually Messi was diving to the ground to win tackles."
