I’d have subbed him off – Ancelotti reveals who to blame for Real Madrid’s poor display against Leipzig

Carlo Ancelotti
Photo: David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images

Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti was unhappy with his players’ ‘poor’ performance in the Champions League clash against RB Leipzig.

Real Madrid won 1-0 in Germany, and struggled to play a 1-1 draw with Leipzig in the return leg at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Speaking after the game, Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti bemoaned how poor his side were tactically.

Interestingly, Ancelotti claims he deserves to be blamed, and he’d have substituted himself as well.

Ancelotti said: “We lost our freshness, we had less control, less directness in the play and we were lazy in possession. We have to make up for this soon. We have two games before the break. There we’ll have time to relax mentally because the team is tired in this regard. After the break we’ll come back better. We may have Courtois and Militão for the quarter-finals and that’s good news.

“Defensively it was important to keep Olmo and Simons under control with Tchouameni and Camavinga. That’s where the danger was in the first leg. We opted for a 4-3-3 to let Kroos get forward a bit more. They managed to play out from the back well with the two centre-backs and the two inside players, that created problems for us and we couldn’t put more pressure on them.

“We changed the system and I brought on an extra forward in Rodrygo. I used a line of four with Tchouameni and Kroos as pivots, with Bellingham on the left and Valverde on the right. If I had to change anyone in the game, I might as well have changed the coach.”