Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti, 65, said he was not worried after his side survived a late comeback in their 3-2 home win over Deportivo Alaves in LaLiga on Tuesday.
The team ofAlaves scored twice in the final minutes, but Ancelotti looked for positives, praising his team’s performance as they took a three-goal lead and created several chances to win by a bigger margin.
“This is football and when you think the game is over and you get distracted and allow your rival to score, you give your rival a confidence boost while your own confidence is shaken. It’s something that happens all the time in football and it’s not going to stop happening.”said Ancelotti to journalists.
“Of course we don’t want this to happen to us, nobody does, but we have to stress that for more than 80 minutes our team played very, very well and that’s what gives us confidence for the future. For more than an hour, the team played very well, looking for opportunities in different ways, in transition, filtering passes through the opponent’s lines? The team is improving, it’s a good thing for us because the schedule is very demanding. Sunday’s game (at Atlético Madrid) will also be very demanding.”
Unbeaten since the start of the season after nine matches in all competitions, the Real d’Ancelotti is second in the ranking of the Liga with 17 points, one length behind the leader Barcelona who has a game in hand and will host the penultimate on Wednesday Getafe. The Real will find theAtleticofourth with 12 points, who will play at Celtic Vigo Thursday before hosting their rival on Sunday.
Ancelotti said he was delighted with the progress of Kylian Mbappé and praised the performance of Jude Bellingham after the two men combined well for the French striker to score the second goal of the Real.
“He gave an assist to Mbappé and played a very complete match. He needs to get used to playing a bit more inside the box, like he did last year. It’s more complicated against a team that has a low block like Alaves. What I ask of Bellingham is to do that job, not to score goals. With the players we have, we can score at any time.”
