Photo credit: www.themalaymailonline.com
According to nation football news online, Zinedine Zidane admitted Real Madrid suffered an El Clasico hangover as they crashed to a 2-0 Champions League quarter-final, first-leg, defeat at Wolfsburg on Wednesday.
Just five days after ending Barcelona's 39-game unbeaten run with a 2-1 away win, Real were humbled as Wolfsburg ignored their struggling mid-table form in Germany's top flight.
Real never recovered as first-half goals from Swiss defender Ricardo Rodriguez and Maximilian Arnold put the hosts 2-0 up at the Volkswagen Arena with 25 minutes gone.
Wolfsburg now have the upper hand ahead of Tuesday's return leg at the Bernabeu.
Coach of Real Madrid Zinedine Zidane was quoted saying:
"I'm not happy, above all with the first-half. This can happen if you don't play with intensity from the start," said coach Zidane, who made just one change from the team which beat Barca.
"We wanted to play here just like we did on Saturday, it was an intensive game for us (in Barcelona) and we were flat in the first-half here.
"Now we have a chance in the return leg and it's good we've got a game in three days (at home to Eibar) to get over this defeat.
"We had our problems, not just in the intensity, but also in our movement.
"We didn't expect the 2-0 defeat and we need to analyse where we went wrong and make corrections."
Zidane even said he was proud of his players and took full responsibility for the result.
"I have to find the reasons for the defeat and the solutions," he added.
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