Real Madrid suffered a shocking loss at the hands of Wolfsburg at the Volkswagen Arena, Wednesday. The eighth-placed team in the Bundesliga netted twice against the Spanish giants leaving Real Madrid in complete despair.
Real Madrid now has a mountain to climb when they take on Wolfsburg in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final at the Santiago Bernabeu next Wednesday.
Real Madrid did not play with the same intensity as they did against Barcelona in the last weekend to end their 39-match unbeaten streak. They lacked that momentum, which was needed to yield a positive result from this crucial encounter against Wolfsburg, Wednesday.
Keylor Navas, the Real Madrid goalkeeper, did not concede a single goal before this match in this season of the Champions League. But unfortunately, Wolfsburg found the back of the net twice to leave the Spanish giants in disarray.
This was indeed a stupendous victory for Dieter Hecking's men. They knew it was going to be a tough encounter. Thus, they fought hard and played good football to stun Cristiano Ronaldo & co. at the Volkswagen Arena.
The first goal came from a spot-kick. It looked like Andre Schurrle kicked his own feet before falling over Casemiro inside the box. The referee might have got that wrong but Wolfsburg did not miss to score from that golden opportunity. Ricardo Rodriguez calmly finished it off and helped Wolfsburg take the lead.
It was only seven minutes later that Julian Draxler found Maximilian Arnold at the end of his cross and the latter put the ball into the back of the net quite easily making the scoreline 2-0 in the 25th minute.
Real Madrid had their chances, but failed to convert all of them. Karim Benzema was poor in front of goal. A player of Ronaldo's class should have scored twice but he hit them off target. Bale was unlucky not to have won that penalty for his side when Luiz Gustavo pulled him down inside the box.
"A big compliment to my team and the fans. This was what I wanted. We wanted to get on Real's nerves; we fought, worked hard, and had the luck and the support to achieve a deserved win. We are in a good position now but we also know what will happen in Madrid," Hecking was quoted as saying by the official website of UEFA.
"Now we need a brave performance in Madrid to achieve what nobody thought we could do. I want to go to the semi-finals."
Real Madrid are on the brink of elimination from the UEFA Champions League. They will have to score twice against the German outfit to get back in the run. Zinedine Zidane was definitely not happy with his players' efforts against Wolfsburg, Wednesday and feels that they can turn around in the second leg at home. He also took the responsibility for this loss.
"I'm not happy with how the game went, especially the first half. That's what happens when you don't play with intensity from the start. We have to rest and think about the return leg because we could still turn the tie around," Zidane said.
"Wolfsburg took the lead by doing very little but football is like that. It wasn't about a lack of confidence. We knew it would be a difficult game and that's what we got."
"But we've had problems with our fitness tonight, due to a hard match against Barcelona."
"We don't have the result we wanted; we didn't expect a 2-0 loss here. I'm responsible for all this, for sure. And now I have to analyse the reasons for this defeat and find solutions for the second leg."
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