Xabi Alonso reveals Antonio conte plan with the Madrid to stop Messi – and it’s incredible story

Xabi Alonso has given an exclusive interview to Marca’s Spanish magazine.

Former footballer of many teams including Real Madrid has revealed a fact as they have made a plan with Sergio Ramos and Antonio conte to stop Barcelona striker, Lionel Messi.

The latter was causing trouble to the barca players because he was unstoppable in every part of the field.

“Messi has done a lot of damage to me, me, Mourinho and Sergio Ramos talked about him a lot,” he explained in an interview with Ecos del Balne.

“We only started to control Messi when I was marking him.

“We sacrificed positions for me to mark him, but once we controlled Messi the matches were even.”

Despite the intense rivalry between the two teams at the time, there is a sense that each made the other better, a notion that the former Liverpool midfielder subscribes to.

“The famous 5-0 made us change a lot of things,” he admitted.

“At that time we weren’t ready to compete, a year later we were.

“Barcelona were dominant, but by the end of 2011 we knew we could strike against anybody in four moves.”