Like last season, Real Madrid will have to go through the play-off box to ensure a European spring. This evening, Kylian Mbappé’s teammates fell from a height by losing to Benfica (4-2), at the end of a match which will go down in the archives of the Champions League. Trailing 3-2 in stoppage time, the Merengues finally conceded a final goal from goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin, which freed his team and allowed the Aguias to qualify for the play-offs to the detriment of OM.
Irony of fate: Real Madrid could find this same Benfica team during their play-off, or the Norwegians from Bodo. Playing like this evening, it is not certain that the Spaniards will see the 1/8 finals this season, and Kylian Mbappé, still hiding in poverty against the Portuguese, was well aware of this: “What we saw today is not normal. Our last goal is a shame for us”thundered the captain of the Blues in the mixed zone.
“We lack a bit of everything”
Author of a double which allowed him to finish top scorer in this phase of the C1 league (13 goals in 7 matches), and to beat a new Ronaldo record, Mbappé had his mind focused elsewhere than on his personal statistics after this match: “Last week, we had good matches, but not today, and we need consistency. We are missing a little bit of everything. I wouldn’t say it’s just an attitude problem or a game problem, I think it’s a general problem, and in the Champions League, every detail counts. If we don’t give everything to win a match…
I don’t have a clear explanation. We lack consistency in our game, it’s a problem that we will have to resolve. We can’t be good one day and bad the next, that’s not the nature of a champion team. It’s hard to take because we wanted to take advantage of the month of February to progress, but we simply deserve our current position. Benfica deserved to win. I saw Benfica playing for survival, and I didn’t see that from our side.» A statement that will have to be translated into action by his teammates.
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– UPDATE
