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BARCELONA - Barcelona coach Ronald Koeman said he was even more disappointed by his side being held to a 1-1 draw at home to Cádiz in LaLiga on Sunday than after last week's 4-1 home drubbing by Paris St Germain.
Barça led thanks to Lionel Messi's 32nd-minute penalty but they failed to kill their opponents off and Álex Fernández leveled in the 89th minute, ending a run of seven straight league wins for the Catalans.
"I'm very, very disappointed, I might be more disappointed than I was on Tuesday," Koeman told a news conference. "We were on a great run in the league and weren't having too many problems in the game. A team like ours need to make our quality count in a game like this and we didn't do that."
The Dutch coach fielded the same starting 11 that had been trounced by PSG and although Cádiz did not pose anything like the threat Kylian Mbappé did, his side still struggled to break them down. Cádiz spent most of the game defending and Fernández's penalty was their only shot on target but it was enough to secure a draw to add to December's shock 2-1 win at home to Barça.
"We have let two points slip in a game that we had under control. We've dropped five points this season against Cádiz and we can't afford to do that," Koeman said.
The draw was extra frustrating for Barça as they only managed to gain one point on league leaders Atlético Madrid, who lost 2-0 at home to Levante on Saturday. Atlético lead third-placed Barça by eight points and their advantage over second-placed Real Madrid has been reduced to three.
"This was a great opportunity to reduce the gap but it shows that you have to fight very hard and be on top of your game to win every game," the Barça coach added. "The title isn't necessarily harder to win now because we've seen that no side is unbeatable and no-one is going to win every game. We still have a chance but once again we've dropped two important points and feel we should have done more."
(Reporting by Richard Martin, editing by Ed Osmond)
