Barcelona will not get overexcited, warns Carles Puyol

Barcelona will not get overexcited, warns Carles Puyol

Barcelona's captain, Carles Puyol, has warned his side will not get carried away after their four-goal Champions League demolition of Stuttgart.

Barcelona cruised through to the quarter-finals with a convincing 5-1 aggregate victory over the German side following last night's 4-0 second leg triumph and they remain on course to defend their European title at the Bernabéu Stadium in May.

It was an impressive performance by Pep Guardiola's side, for whom

Lionel Messi netted a brace and Pedro Rodríguez and Bojan Krkic also got on the scoresheet, but Puyol is adamant the Catalan giants will remain grounded, knowing how easily things can go awry in this competition.

"The euphoria is normal but we have our feet on the ground as it's already been shown you can have one bad day and be eliminated," said Puyol, referring to the exits of Real Madrid, Chelsea and Milan from this season's competition.

The team's victory over Stuttgart was driven by Messi and his team-mate

Thierry Henry summed up his recent form as "ridiculous". The Argentina forward has notched 31 goals in all competitions to continue the playing form that carried him to the Fifa player of the year award in 2009.

"It is kind of ridiculous what he's doing. He's amazing," said Henry of the 22-year-old. "He's playing at a level where nobody from Barcelona wants him to stop."

Suttgart's manager, Christian Gross, agreed, saying: "I think there is no doubting Messi is the best player in the world. His ability is incredible when you consider his age. I think it's fair to compare him to [Diego] Maradona. We started the game well but we couldn't stop Messi in the decisive moments."

Barça go into tomorrow's draw for the last eight along with the 2008 winners and last season's runners-up, Manchester United, as well as Arsenal, Inter, Lyon, Bordeaux, CSKA Moscow and Bayern Munich.

Barcelona's president, Joan Laporta, said: "I'm very pleased. It was important to get through to the quarters, the team deserved it. We are on the right path. The important thing is that we are continuing forward with high hopes and that we can make our dreams come true.

"We have very difficult opponents ahead of us," he added. "We cannot think about the final, on Friday we will know who we will face and we will continue working as we have until now. They will be some hard-fought quarter-finals."