Thibaut Courtois was critical of Real Madrid’s performance against Arsenal in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League quarter-final, as los Blancos fell to a 3-0 defeat in North London on Tuesday.
Declan Rice scored two free-kicks before Mikel Merino added the third goal of the night, handing the Gunners a comfortable lead ahead of next week’s deciding leg at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.
“They played well between the lines and they created a lot of danger,” Courtois admitted in his post-match interview.
“In the first half, we coped well and created danger ourselves with a few counterattacks,” the Belgian goalkeeper explained, “but in the second half, we forgot how to play football. We left them in space and we weren’t composed on the ball.”
Courtois labelled the fouls conceded as “unnecessary”, criticising his teammates for giving away goalscoring opportunities “where there was no danger.”
“If we know that we’re playing against a team with such great free-kick takers, there’s no need to commit these fouls.”
The quality of Rice’s free-kick efforts has been praised by fans and pundits alike, but Courtois insisted that he will “take the responsibility for putting an extra man in the wall” for the midfielder’s first goal.
“With the first goal, I thought I’d organised the wall well. I always put an extra man so that those curling strikes can’t get through, but he shot it very well.”
“I knew that he’s a good free-kick taker, but I didn’t know he could curl it like that.”
He continued: “With the second goal, I don’t think he could have hit it any better.”
On Real Madrid’s chances of producing a sensational comeback in the Spanish capital and progressing to the semi-finals, the 32-year-old expressed optimism
“3-0 is difficult, but we’re a strong team at home and people need to believe in this team because we’ll give everything we can to come back from this result. It’s possible but we’ll have to work and correct our errors.”
Estadio Santiago Bernabéu will host the second leg next Wednesday, with kick-off at 20:00 BST [21:00 CEST].