Eddie Howe hailed Newcastle United\u2019s meeting with Barcelona as the \u201cbiggest game\u201d in the club\u2019s recent history, urging his players to replicate Faustino Asprilla\u2019s heroics of 1997 and write their names in the history books.<\/p>\n
Almost thirty years on from the Magpies\u2019 historic group stage victory over Bar\u00e7a in September 1997, Newcastle United welcome Hansi Flick\u2019s men to St James\u2019 Park for a mammoth round-of-16 tie.<\/p>\n
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Quizzed as to whether it is the biggest game in the club\u2019s history, Eddie Howe admitted that \u201csomeone could trip me up, and going way back I\u2019m sure they will, but in recent history, for me it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s very much the mentality that we need, rising to the occasion and embracing the size of the game. These are things that have helped us this season and we\u2019re looking for the same again,\u201d he told reporters gathered for his pre-match press conference on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are only 16 teams left and we\u2019re one of them, so it\u2019s very much an opportunity to grab a moment we may never get again. You don\u2019t know what life brings tomorrow, let alone in future seasons. We don\u2019t want to waste that opportunity and kick ourselves thinking \u2018what if\u2019.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think this is a moment for us to try and grab. In my time here, just over four years, we\u2019ve worked to try and get to this point so as long as we perform to our maximum, we\u2019ll have to accept the result but we\u2019re going to try and get as close as we can to our very best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newcastle met Barcelona under the St James\u2019 Park lights earlier this season, too, falling to a 1-2 defeat as Marcus Rashford bagged a brace<\/a> before Anthony Gordon scored a 90th minute consolation.<\/p>\n Howe explains: \u201cWhen you go through that experience as we\u2019ve said quite a lot before when you\u2019re playing the very best teams, you take a little bit of that game with you going forward because there\u2019s so much to take from that.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI thought that they played well, we played well, especially for the first half of the game I thought we were right in it. It swung on sort of big moments in front of goal, they took theirs and we didn\u2019t take ours but I think we take a lot of confidence from our performance for the majority of the game and obviously take little bits away from what we need to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n Reflecting on another group stage meeting between the sides back in 1997\/98, when Faustino Asprilla scored three goals in a dramatic win against the blaugrana, Howe revealed that \u201cyou couldn\u2019t not watch that moment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was on terrestrial TV, it was one of those legendary games.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cWe want people in future years to be talking about this team. Of course Faustino Asprilla gets a hat-trick, mainly off Keith Gillespie\u2019s delivery from the right, and I want our players to be talked about in the same way 20, 30, 40 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n While they may be viewed as the underdogs against a team sitting four points clear at the top of LaLiga, Howe insists that \u201chas helped us at many times when we\u2019ve been in that position where we feel the odds are stacked against us.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to need to use every psychological tool that we can to help us in this game because it\u2019s undeniable that we\u2019re playing a very, very good team\u2026 an outstandingly well coached team, I have to say as well, from having watched them thoroughly in both games preparing for them as we have done. They\u2019re a top team.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cThey proved very recently against Atl\u00e9tico Madrid that probably the game isn\u2019t going to be dead regardless of the outcome in this game. I think for us we just have to focus on trying to win. You can\u2019t overthink it. Having watched both of those games, it was really intriguing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had a big deficit to try and claw back<\/a> and they nearly got there<\/a>, so it was two really good games against Atl\u00e9tico. Again, I think their recent record in the league has been very consistent and their style of play is consistent, so I think we know what we\u2019re going to face,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Newcastle United host Barcelona at 20:00 UK on Tuesday 10 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eddie Howe hailed Newcastle United\u2019s meeting with Barcelona as the \u201cbiggest game\u201d in the club\u2019s recent history, urging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[28725,206676,16924,1206,1205,49,48,15866,2678,8668,561,82,63725,3585],"class_list":["post-525054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-anthony-gordon","tag-asprilla","tag-atletico-madrid","tag-barca","tag-barcelona","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-eddie-howe","tag-marcus-rashford","tag-newcastle-united","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-st-james-park","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}