Thibaut Courtois was another of the protagonists at the end of the Real Madrid-Arsenal match and openly lamented the fact that the team does not have a striker like Joselu this year.
The Belgian also made it very clear that there is no doubt about Ancelotti.
Madrid’s Champions League campaign came to an end. Los Blancos were eliminated from the competition in the quarter-finals at the hands of Arsenal, who won both games. Courtois, undoubtedly the best player in the Spanish team, stood up for his team at the end of the match at the Bernabeu.
“When you get a penalty against you, if you stop it you keep believing. At the beginning we created some danger, the fans pushed us, but the opposition defended very well and were organised. It was very difficult to create danger. At half-time we felt that if we scored the first goal, we had the tie open. They found themselves with the first goal and we equalised quickly. Raya made a great save. We lost against a superior team,” said the Belgian.
“We put in a lot of crosses, but this year we don’t have a Joselu who can win those duels up top,” he said of his side’s struggles in front of goal.
Despite the team’s elimination, Courtois defended his coach, the Italian Carlo Ancelotti, assuring that “there is no doubt with him” and that his message continues to resonate in the dressing room, while advocating “self-criticism”.
“Sometimes you have to be self-critical and look at everything well. I feel that we are a team, but sometimes maybe we need to make more team plays and less individual ones, because if they double-mark Vini or Kylian…. We have to be self-critical and improve,” he said.
In addition, he advocated competing for the titles that are still up for grabs. “There’s still a lot of season left for us, with the league at stake, the Cup final in 20 days, the Club World Cup… And we have to pull it off. The atmosphere in the stadium was very nice and hopefully we can give them joy,” he concluded.