Galatasaray 3-2 Real Madrid
Real Coach Mourinho:
“For a few minutes the tie was wide open, despite the fact that it should have been finished with the 0-1 scoreline at halftime. When a team plays with this passion and emotion, instead of playing against 11, you’re playing against 50,000. In football everything is possible, we lost possession, they scored and then got better. When it went to 3-1, instead of making things more difficult, the team calmed down. We closed the open spaces that there were with tactical changes with Di Maria and Albiol.
From there the match was under control, and we deserved to go through and Galatasaray deserved to win and show the pride of a big club with good players, a great coach and great fans”.
“When I was forced to make changes and change the structure of the team it was because I saw that the situation was difficult. We did not finish off the tie by scoring goals and had to do something”.
“If being eliminated in the round of 16 was routine at Real Madrid, then I think there would be reason to be tough. We’re through to the semi-finals again, I know that this is not the aim, but we’ve done it three seasons in a row and I’m happy with the players. In the second half we could have done better, we didn’t play well as a team and left spaces. In the last 10 minutes we expected them to be dangerous and they weren’t. We regained control, which means that everything is good”.
“If my team has to concede goals, I’d prefer that Drogba and Sneijder score. For the latter it is important and Drogba is Drogba, he dies for football. His goal was fantastic and the offside goal was not a goal because Varane was really smart and took a step forward. It would have been 4-1 and the match would have been more difficult”.
