MADRID, 12 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, celebrated the good performance offered in this first part of the season, where they have had “continuity” and where he believes that “the but” may be that they must “manage better” when they are ahead in the scoreboard as happened against Betis last Saturday and this Tuesday against Union Berlin, a match in which they had to correct the few centers into the area despite having Joselu who showed that “he is a great finisher.”
“There is no but about this group stage, we have done this part of the season very well, playing with continuity and I think the quality has improved compared to the beginning of the season. In the last two games I think the but is that we had advantage and we did not manage it well, we have to manage it better, not just think that with just possession you can take home the result, you always have to finish it,” Ancelotti warned at a press conference after the game.
The Italian saw the match as “positive” in that Dani Ceballos scored “an important goal” and that he had a “complete” performance and that Joselu showed that “he is a great finisher in the area.” “Sometimes we have to take advantage of his quality more as we did in the second half, and not in the first, in which we played well, but he focused very little and when you have a striker like him you have to put in seven or eight crosses,” he acknowledged.
In any case, performances like that of the Andalusian or the Galician show that the injuries his team is suffering are being “a great opportunity for players who in theory should play less and who are taking advantage of it well.”
Regarding starting Jude Bellingham and keeping him on the field despite having “a silly yellow card”, the man from Reggiolo pointed out that the Englishman is “in optimal physical condition” and that there was “no type of risk”. “The only change prepared was Kroos for Valverde because they were a little tired and I didn't want to give them many minutes,” he explained.
Ancelotti referred to the final stretch of the first half where they missed a penalty and conceded the 1-0 lead. “I told the players that they were 40 minutes well played and two minutes of madness, that it was an oversight that had to be fixed without haste, enjoying the game a little more on the outside,” he remarked.
And regarding the third missed penalty in this campaign, this time by Luka Modric, he recalled that “looking for a reason is very complicated” because the veteran Croatian midfielder “is usually cold” in these situations and that “training him is not that simple either.”