Arsenal star Alexis Sanchez says that his time at Barcelona made him a better footballer.

The Chilean star spent three seasons with the Catalan club before joining the Gunners in 2014.

The 28-year-old has described a list of qualities he picked up while playing for Barça, including an overall tactical sense which the Blaugrana constantly trained for.

"I was confident about my abilities as a player, what I had to offer and what I could do [when I joined Barca]," Alexis told Arsenal Player.

"Gradually I began to realise what I was learning about football through playing at Barcelona. It's not all about following the ball. You have to have good movement off the ball and an open distribution of players. That's how we played then.

"Messi would be in the middle and we would try to give him space so that he could create even more space and then breach the defence through the middle.

"It wasn't just a question of playing football, it was also about movement, the right touch of the ball and retaining possession.

"On the counter-attack, it was about knowing when to break through and when not to. There were times when I used to break when I shouldn't have and other times when I broke through and the ball wasn't passed to me.

"This taught me a lot about the use of space and knowing the right moment to make a run. That's a difficult thing to learn as a footballer."