Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti is hopeful his team can turn around the deficit from Tuesday’s heavy 3-0 loss to Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, Afrosport reports.
A Declan Rice free kick brace and a Mikel Merino strike gave the Gunners the edge heading into next Wednesday’s second leg at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Los Blancos have been renowned for always coming back to turn ties around in their favour, and Ancelotti has called on his team to believe in the possibility of that happening.
“I think you know there’s a lot of quality, they have a good mentality, but today Arsenal did a few things better than we did,” the Italian said.
“We have to be honest in our criticism and our valuation of ourselves. We weren’t bad in large stretches of the game but we’ve not just been really poor, it was a poor result but it was a tough result but those two goals from set pieces from [Declan] Rice…there were things we did well in the first half.
“Now we have opportunity to raise our level and then it just dropped down in second half and physically Arsenal had a great level.”
Ancelotti added: “If you look at the game, there’s no possibility. But, football is [always] chang[ing]. I never expected, no one expected that [Declan] Rice scored two goals from set pieces and he scored two goals from set pieces tonight. [In] football, anything can happen. We have to believe, we need to have trust, because sometimes, a lot of times in Bernabeu, it happened.”
2 – Real Madrid have failed to score in consecutive Champions League games for the first time since February-March 2009 in the last-16 tie against Liverpool with Juande Ramos as manager. Strange. pic.twitter.com/gVugGUaPjb
— OptaJose (@OptaJose) April 8, 2025
Tuesday’s defeat was the first time Real Madrid failed to score in consecutive Champions League games since the round of 16 tie against Liverpool during the 2008-09 season.
