Real Madrid vs Barcelona: I didn't set up the team good enough to get the win, says Carlo Ancelotti

Real Madrid suffered an embarrassing defeat against Barcelona in the highly-anticipated El Clasico at the weekend. The clash between the two Spanish giants has normally been a tightly-fought affair with little to separate them. But it was not the case on Sunday night. Barcelona brought their A-game on and were mesmerising from the start. They hardly gave Real Madrid a chance to settle down. The end score was a shocking 4-0 defeat for Carlo Ancelotti’s boys. After the match, Ancelotti took the blame on himself and stated that the “set up didn’t work.”

“Playing Modrić as a number 10 was intended to help play out from the back and find space behind the line with Rodrygo, Valverde and Vini Jr. The set up didn’t work. I didn’t set up the team good enough to get to win. Barça were better than us and deserved to win. It’s not difficult for me to accept that I didn’t set the team up well. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t. I got it wrong in this game, but I’m not going to make a big thing out of it. It’s a defeat that hits us hard, we know how important a match against Barcelona is, especially for the fans,” Ancelotti said in the press room, as per the club’s website.

“We’re really sorry for the performance, but we have to keep going, focussed on the next two weeks and work hard. We have to stay calm and keep our heads because this loss is very painful, but we have to remember that we’re nine points clear of second place. We have to stay well-balanced. The break coming up is good for us. We can get Karim and Mendy back involved. We’ve got time to absorb this defeat, which is a very painful one, as I said, but we have to stay focussed”.

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Don’t think this defeat will impact the team: Ancelotti 

Ancelotti then went on to state that the upcoming two-week international break will be a good thing for the team following the defeat. “The fans were very good, with us, even in the defeat. They’re aware that we didn’t have a good night and nobody knows what’ll happen over the coming months, but these two weeks will give us the chance to rest and prepare to win the next game. We’ve got an advantage, but we have to concentrate on winning every game. I don’t think this defeat will impact the team. The set up wasn’t right. I can get it wrong once, it’s quite rare it happens twice,” he explained.

The coach also suggested that forward Karim Benzema not playing in the Clasico was not the reason behind the defeat. He added: “We can’t go thinking that we’ve lost because Karim wasn’t playing. Where it went wrong is that we tried to press them a bit higher up the pitch and they played out from the back very well and after they got the first goal, we struggled even more to regain possession. We made a strong start, but we then really struggled to win the ball back, we took some risks at the back and we’ve struggled overall.