<\/p>\n
Senior figures at Real Madrid were angry with the image presented by the team in their 1-0 Champions League defeat to Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday, sources told ESPN, with both manager Carlo Ancelotti and defender Dani Carvajal singled out for criticism.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbappe\u2019s 94th minute winner gave PSG the advantage in the round-of-16 tie, after Lionel Messi had seen a 62nd-minute penalty saved by Thibaut Courtois.<\/p>\n
Madrid were dominated by the home side throughout the game at the Parc des Princes and were unable to muster a single shot on target, with Mbappe a constant threat.<\/p>\n
Sources told ESPN that club executives were unhappy with the team\u2019s performance, the defensive approach adopted by Ancelotti and Carvajal\u2019s efforts to contain Mbappe.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it was Madrid\u2019s lack of a decisive, match-winning superstar like Mbappe that had made the difference, they said.<\/p>\n
There is concern that the absences through suspension of midfielder Casemiro and left-back Ferland Mendy for the return leg at the Bernabeu on March 9 \u2014 after both picked up yellow cards in Paris \u2014 are significant blows to Madrid\u2019s chances of turning the tie around.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the first leg on Tuesday, coach Ancelotti said the team had \u201csuffered in every aspect\u201d as they struggled to cope with PSG\u2019s pressing, describing Mbappe as \u201cunstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Casemiro said the team \u201clacked something on the counterattack\u201d and had \u201cmisplaced a lot of passes\u201d while goalkeeper Courtois was also frank in his assessment. He said the team \u201clost a really stupid ball\u201d in the build-up to Mbappe\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very tough. We didn\u2019t play well,\u201d Courtois said. \u201cBut in the end it doesn\u2019t change much. With no away goals rule, if we\u2019d drawn we\u2019d have to win [at the Bernabeu] anyway to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sources close to the dressing room told ESPN that the team were hopeful of turning the tie around in the second leg and believed a 1-0 loss was in fact not a bad result, given how poorly they had played.<\/p>\n
\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior figures at Real Madrid were angry with the image presented by the team in their 1-0 Champions League defeat to Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday, sources told ESPN, with both manager Carlo Ancelotti and defender Dani Carvajal singled out for criticism. Kylian Mbappe\u2019s 94th minute winner gave PSG the advantage in the round-of-16 tie, after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":994969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[5185,5186,555],"class_list":["post-994968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ancelotti","tag-mad","tag-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}