Luis Suarez: 'The boos motivated me and Manchester City gave us too much space,' says Barcelona striker after two-goal haul

Uruguayan striker scored an excellent brace in the opening half an hour

Luis Suarez has confirmed what seemed evident in his Champions League destruction of Manchester City last night – that the booing he received early in the match motivated him to the two-goal stellar performance.

The Uruguayan, who achieved his first double strike for the Catalans since leaving Liverpool for Spain, said that City had left space in which he and his teammates could operate and that they had happily capitalised on it.

"Of course, though, to come back to England and against a team you’re always motivated to play against," Suarez told Uefa.com. "There are certain types of players like me who get more inspired, more motivated when fans boo them, it helps motivate you a bit more."

His return to England did not seem to carry any sentiment in the post-match mixed zone, given that he spoke happily with Spanish journalists but barely glanced at English writers he knew and had made on a number of occasions. After a performance which revealed his innate ability to time late runs to devastating effect – bringing his second goal - and to brutally convert half chances – for his first, he was happy to state that Barcelona had been “clever” in the way they created openings.

"It was one of the better ones but we produced a really good game, the team in general and managed to take advantage of the space City left open," Suarez said.

"We were clever in our reading of the game and we created a lot of openings and could have scored another goal. Obviously it is pleasing, first of all to be able to help the team, they were important goals in a Champions League knockout game."

Suarez made direct reference that he has scored two goals against Joe Hart on two successive occasions – the previous one being Uruguay’s 2-1 win over England at Arena Sao Paulo in June. "In the last games I’ve scored twice against him but that happens in football," said. "We know it if was 3-1 [and Messi had converted a penalty] we might have been able to relax a little bit, not 100 per cent. But against City you never know what might happen, they have a lot of good players who can win a game for them."

Joe Hart admitted that City had “panicked” when their initial game plan failed.

"We know it wasn’t good enough what we did in the first half." he said. "We panicked a bit when the press got beat and we backed off and which wasn’t the way we wanted to play and we improved that in the second half."