{"id":169162,"date":"2025-09-20T06:22:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T06:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/169162\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T06:22:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T06:22:33","slug":"incredible-ivan-rakitic-hails-barcelona-goalkeeper-joan-garcia-after-champions-league-heroics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/169162\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIncredible!\u201d – Ivan Rakitic hails Barcelona goalkeeper Joan Garcia after Champions League heroics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcus Rashford wasn\u2019t the only Barcelona player to make the headlines after Thursday\u2019s Champions League win over Newcastle in the League Phase opener at St. James\u2019 Park: Joan Garcia made his European debut and had a fantastic night in the Bar\u00e7a goal<\/a>, and he caught the eye of a club legend.<\/p>\n

Ivan Rakitic spoke in an interview on Friday about Bar\u00e7a\u2019s win in Newcastle and was asked about the new goalkeeper and the impact he had in the victory, and was full of praise for Garcia and says he could be a difference-maker for the Blaugrana in their new European journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncredible, incredible. That\u2019s why they signed him. We need a goalkeeper who can come alive in difficult times. We have him, and he\u2019s very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: COPE via Mundo Deportivo<\/a><\/p>\n

Rakitic was there the last time Bar\u00e7a won the Champions League and he knows exactly what it feels like to have a young goalkeeper make a giant impact in Europe in his first season for the Blaugrana: Marc-Andr\u00e9 ter Stegen was very important in Bar\u00e7a\u2019s run to their last European title, and his shot-stopping and poise on the ball then are very similar to what Garcia has shown so far in his Bar\u00e7a career.<\/p>\n

The \u20ac25 million the club paid for his services look like an absolute steal with every stellar performance from Garcia, and every Champions League winner must have a great goalkeeper to deal with the best attacking players in the world.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still early, but it does look more and more clear that Bar\u00e7a have a great goalkeeper in their ranks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcus Rashford wasn\u2019t the only Barcelona player to make the headlines after Thursday\u2019s Champions League win over Newcastle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[4218,403,99],"class_list":["post-169162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-barcelona-uefa-champions-league","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}