Zinedine Zidane said Real Madrid must heed the lessons from their Juventus scare in order to finish off Bayern Munich in their EUFA Champions League semi-final second leg on Tuesday next week.
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.
However, 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 said nothing is decided, despite Real’s slender advantage.
Photo: AFP
“We will have to fight in the second leg, nothing is decided, that showed in the second leg against Juventus,” Zidane said.
“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,” the Frenchman added.
The hosts took the lead at the sold-out Allianz Arena through Joshua Kimmich, but Marcelo equalized just before the break.
Substitute Asensio hit Real’s winner after finishing a counterattack 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,” Zidane said. “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,” Zidane said.
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,” Madrid’s German midfielder said. “The result is good, nothing more than that.”
“Bayern were probably a bit better than us, but we took our chances well,” he added.
Bayern captain Thomas Mueller admitted that the result does them no favors.
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-hour and were yesterday to be examined.
“Madrid is Madrid, we saw how coolly they took their chances,” Mueller said. “We need another mentality in front of goal, which could have been very different in my opinion.”
Last year’s 2-1 second-leg win over 90 minutes at Madrid in the quarter-finals — before Bayern eventually lost 6-3 on aggregate after stoppage-time — gives them hope, Mueller said.
“We won’t give up, we won there last year, but we need a different mentality and a killer instinct,” he said.
Bayern coach Jupp Heynckes was not happy to see his team throw away the lead and waste a string of chances.
“It was a curious game, we had a lot of chances we didn’t use, so it’s no wonder we lost,” Heynckes said.
“I’m not accusing anyone, but our defense was poor for the goals they scored — we gave them away,” Heynckes added.
“What team has so many chances against Real and doesn’t use them?” he said. “We have nothing to lose in Madrid and go there with a free spirit.”
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