Don’t fall Zzz, Real!
Zidane urges European champions to stay awake in second leg
Zinedine Zidane says Real Madrid must heed the lessons from their Juventus scare in order to finish off Bayern Munich in next Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final return leg after winning the first encounter 2-1. Having suffered an almighty scare at home in the quarter-finals, when Juventus won 3-1 in Madrid after Real had beaten them 3-0 in Turin, the French legend said: “We’ll have to suffer again and face Bayern in a different way at home, because if we don’t, we could have a bad result next week.”
MUNICH: Zinedine Zidane says Real Madrid must heed the lessons from their Juventus scare in order to finish off Bayern Munich in next Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final return leg.
Real took a step closer to a third straight European title after Marco Asensio hit the winner in a 2-1 first-leg comeback victory in Munich on Wednesday.
But having suffered an almighty scare at home in the quarter-finals, when Juventus won 3-1 in Madrid after Real had beaten them 3-0 in Turin, Zidane says nothing is decided despite Real’s slender advantage.
“We will have to fight in the second leg, nothing is decided, that showed in the second leg against Juventus,” said Zidane.
“We will have to suffer again and face Bayern in a different way at home, because if we don’t, we could have a bad result next week,” he warned.
The hosts took the lead at the sold-out Allianz Arena through Joshua Kimmich, but Marcelo equalised just before the break.
Substitute Asensio hit Real’s winner after finishing a counter-attack to seal Real’s sixth straight win over Bayern in the knockout stages of Europe.
“We can be happy with the result, we had difficulties at the start of the match in imposing our game,” said Zidane.
“It’s not easy to come and win here, we can do better but we’re happy with the result.”
Zidane pulled a surprise before kickoff by dropping Gareth Bale, but insisted he does not have a problem with the Welshman.
“I have a lot of quality players here, he has been playing well and I know I can count on Gareth Bale the same way I do those others who also didn’t play,” said Zidane.
Toni Kroos was unimpressed with Real’s performance at his former club.
“It was an average performance from us in the end, we had a lot of work to do, a lot of running,” said Real’s Germany midfielder.
“The result is good, nothing more than that. “Bayern were probably a bit better than us but we took our chances well.”
Bayern captain Thomas Mueller admits the result does them no favours.
To compound Bayern’s woes, they could have lost both Arjen Robben and Jerome Boateng for the return.
Both suffered leg injuries in the opening half an hour and will be examined.
“Madrid is Madrid, we saw their how coolly they took their chances,” said Mueller.
“We need another mentality in front of goal, which could have been very different in my opinion.” — AFP