Following a painful defeat which knocked Real Madrid out of the top eight of the Champions League, coach \u00c1lvaro Arbeloa reflected on the 4-2 loss to Benfica by insisting, \u201cI\u2019m responsible for this defeat, just like in Albacete. I feel totally responsible when things don\u2019t go well. But we haven\u2019t been eliminated from the Champions League, we have two matches left. And we\u2019re going to face those two matches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbeloa on whether he regrets saying forwards don\u2019t have to defend<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t regret anything I said, it\u2019s what I believe. If the conclusion is that we lose because the forwards don\u2019t run, I completely disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were far from what we want to be, from the demands of the opponent, from the atmosphere, from what was at stake\u2026 We weren\u2019t able to perform at the required level for 90 minutes. We knew we had to work hard, we\u2019re aware that there\u2019s a lot to do. We have to look ahead. To win these games, you have to do a lot of things right for 90 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the first time a goalkeeper has scored against me. They had to take a risk, we were down to nine men, we had to score too. They took the risk and they won.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t surprised, I said yesterday that the demands of the match were going to be maximum. I knew the level of the opposition and their manager. I told the players that. I wasn\u2019t able to get the players to perform at the level I wanted them to. If the team doesn\u2019t perform at the level I want, the responsibility is always mine. I wasn\u2019t able to get them to approach the match the way I wanted them to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbeloa on Cestero playing ahead of Ceballos<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a technical decision. We needed to avoid the situation that happened with Asencio, everyone in defence had a card. I wanted to protect the team a little, I knew they could beat us in an attack. In the end, they took it out on Ra\u00fal. I have a lot of confidence in Cestero, he was very good for us. That\u2019s all there is to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbeloa on a lack of intensity<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lacked a lot of things. A lot of things. It was a Champions League match against an opponent who was playing for their lives in front of their fans. They played with intensity and attacked very well. There\u2019s no single reason, we lacked a lot of things to beat Benfica today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbeloa on whether he\u2019s angry<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course. We\u2019re not happy. We knew what we were coming into and how difficult it would be. They got the better of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbeloa on what went wrong<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to say it was just one thing and that I\u2019m clear about it. A lot of things were missing. We\u2019re a long way from the version of ourselves we can be. There\u2019s a lot to improve on and I still think that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrustration, for not being able to control their emotions at times. That\u2019s how it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I think today I\u2019d rather not talk about the referee, given the performance of my team, for which I am responsible. I\u2019d rather not comment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbeloa on playing Benfica again<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to wait and see who we get.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a painful defeat which knocked Real Madrid out of the top eight of the Champions League, coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,61019,95176,82],"class_list":["post-439796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-real-madrid-cf-champions-league","tag-real-madrid-cf-coach","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}