Antonio Conte admits his players are preparing to suffer against Barcelona and also described Lionel Messi as the world’s best player.
Chelsea host Barcelona at Stamford Bridge in the first leg of their Champions League match on Tuesday evening.
Barcelona are among the favourites to win the competition with Conte saying his players must find a way to succeed without dominating the match.
However, Messi has failed to score in eight games against Chelsea but Conte expects the Argentine to cause his side problems at the Bridge.
When asked how Chelsea can stop Messi, Conte said: ‘This is a good question. we are talking about the best player in the world, Messi has the capacity to solve the situation, to create a chance when you are not seeing the chance to score.
‘This means that this player we are talking about a fantastic player, for sure, we must pay great attention but not only to Messi but Luis Suarez is a fantastic striker.
‘The whole team is very dangerous, in this case we have to try to work together to try to stop Barcelona, Messi, Suarez, Iniesta, the whole Barcelona team.
‘We have to work very hard, we have to know during the game we must be prepared to suffer, but at the same time we must have the idea that in every moment we can go straight to try to score.
‘We must have ambition to try to play our football. We know Barcelona’s characteristics, they like to have possession of the ball, they like to dominate the game.
‘In every game they are able to create many chances to score, for this reason we must be prepared to suffer, suffer without the ball, be compact, don’t lose our heads during the game, then to try with the ball what we know, what we’ve tried during the training.’
