Hleb: "I want to start scoring goals"

Barcelona player Alexander Hleb gave an interview to football site ESPNsoccernet.





It's been a few months for you now at FC Barcelona. How are things fitting in for you?
Now things are much better and of course, I'm learning Spanish, I feel more like at home. I'm more integrated in the team and that's something that is very important for me.

When you received the offer from Barcelona, did you have to think about it very much or was it an appealing challenge for you?
Of course it was an offer from a fantastic club. It's harder work here to make it into the first eleven. But Barcelona is fantastic and everything is very good.

There's quite a connection between Arsenal and Barcelona, players coming and going and obviously you had Cesc to tell you about Barcelona and Henry to guide you.
Yes, it was great. I spoke a lot about Barcelona with Cesc before I arrived here. He explained about a lot of things, about the place and about the fantastic weather. I want to enjoy my time at the club and I'm very happy to be here.

For some time now there are rumours about Cesc returning to Barcelona. Would there be 'room' for him in the team with Xavi in midfield?
I don't know. I can't really say anything about that. Xavi is a fantastic player and Cesc is my friend. You'll have to ask him if he wants to come to Barcelona or not because I think he is happy at Arsenal.

If there's one thing impressive about Barça recently it's the amount of good players coming through from the youth teams.
Yes, the club has a fantastic youth scheme and we see the young players at Barcelona playing as if they were already 30-years-old. Busquets, Pedro, Bojan, etcetera. I think for the clubs it's excellent.

What do you think of the coach: young, knows the club very well and doing surprisingly well...
I think he's very good. He's young, he's brought a lot of discipline into the club and he has a lot of contact with the players and that's fantastic at the moment because everything is going so well at Barcelona.

With your league debut in mind and the tackle which led to your injury against Racing Santander, you've said the Spanish league is much tougher than the English one.
I saw that sometimes in Spain players kick you, they go after you rather than the ball. I think referees need to protect the players more during games in the Spanish league.

What other things in Spanish football are you learning to handle?
Well, I think the Spanish league has very good quality, fantastic football. I think everyone in Spain can play well which means we have to be concentrated in all our games because we can lose points if we're not 100% concentrated.

34 goals in 10 games is the best record since the 1950s at Barça. That's obviously good news but does it worry the coach and the team in the sense that the supporters will always demand big wins?
But I like winning 5-0 or 6-0! (laughs) And I think the team likes that too! I think it's very important to win but it's much better if it's a 5-0 win. I think the fans like those results, enjoy the matches with such big scores.

Samuel Eto'o is on 13 goals now. Did it surprise you that Pep Guardiola didn't want him in the team during the summer?
I don't really know why. Eto'o is one of the best strikers in the world. I don't really want to speak about why Guardiola didn't want him in the summer. But the truth is that I'm happy he stayed in Barcelona, he's helping us a lot, he's scoring a lot of goals.

In your case, you have said you think you can adapt to playing in other positions and hope to start scoring too.
I want to start scoring goals, yes. But after my injury I'm still not in my best form. What I do know is that coach Guardiola believes in me and we talk a lot about my game so I hope soon enough I'm back into my best form.

After the draw against FC Basel means the next game against Sporting Lisbon is a key one to guarantee the first spot and avoid 'top teams' in the next draw.
Yes, I think we always want to win our games and we don't think about the draw so much as we do about winning our matches. We're out to win the three points against Sporting. I know this isn't done yet, but we're counting on it.



Read the full interview here