Barcelona boss Frank Rijkaard said he would take Middlesbrough manager Steve McClaren's advice concerning the Catalans' UEFA Champions League clash against Chelsea later this month. The Dutch coach wants to ask his English counterpart for advice after McClaren's Middlesbrough grabbed a shocking 3-0 victory over Chelsea in the Premiership on Saturday. "I'm going to ring the manager of Middlesbrough so he can tell me how they won," Rijkaard told The Sun newspaper on Monday. "We know what happened because we had our scout there. This says that things aren't working like before," he added.
Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho Barcelona will travel to London to face English champions Chelsea in the first-leg of the UCL round of 16 on the 22nd of February. Both Chelsea and Barcelona have been suffering a dip of form lately. The Blues' shock defeat to Milddesbrough was met by Barcelona slipping to a 1-0 defeat from Valencia, which narrowed the gap with at the summit of the Primera Liga to six points "Chelsea will treat the 3-0 defeat as a warning without doubt. You always need maximum concentration but they are human just like us and in football these things can happen," Rijkaard said. Last season, Chelsea knocked Barcelona out of the UCL after beating them 5-4 on aggregate in the competition's round of 16.
