Bellingham critical of defence, as Ancelotti explains difficult choice of style

Real Madrid playmaker Jude Bellingham has admitted that they were not good enough defensively against Stuttgart, as the Gerrman side peppered their goal, forcing Thibaut Courtois into six saves. The England midfielder explained that it was a ‘new-look’ Real Madrid, and still a work in progress.

Bellingham felt that their press was broken down by Stuttgart all too easily, as he told TNT Sport.

“We gave up far too many chances, but as soon as they got past our first line of pressure, they always seemed to cause us problems.”

“We’ve changed a few things, the loss of Toni is huge in terms of our rhythm and the way we play, he’s such a special player, he’s irreplaceable, but we’re going to have to find lots of new ways to try and cover for his hole. It’s getting a lot better,” he said, before noting that it was a positive they could get the win without playing their best.

His boss, Carlo Ancelotti, told the media after the game that he had never won a Champions League without suffering, but the degree to which Stuttgart broke through the Real Madrid midfield had the Santiago Bernabeu whistling his players.

“It was difficult for us to recover, they managed the ball very well, for us to touch the ball, we had to stay compact because they played really well with the ball,” Ancelotti explained.

“It depends what you choose to do. We chose to play vertical, and we had a lot of opportunities. When we were 1-0 up, two or three counter-attacks. The fluidity is when you have the ball, but when you have the attackers we do, we have to, we try to, play more vertical.”

“You have to choose between building up or playing vertically. Sometimes the coach chooses to play vertically. If we play building up, we don’t score the first goal, which was with a vertical ball from Tchouameni. We have very fast forwards.”

“We have to work harder on building up from the back, today we had a bit more trouble in the first half. But we have to get close to the opponent’s goal as quickly as possible.

As pointed out by Relevo, Carlo Ancelotti had asked the Madrid-based media to reassess his side in five weeks time at the start of the season, as they had not had a preseason. Things are still struggling to click for Los Blancos though, and they scarcely look closer to finding the solutions to their issues.

Nevertheless, Los Blancos won without impressing all the way through until January last year, with notable exceptions, before they really found their groove. As long as they are in all of the competitions by February, Ancelotti will likely be satisfied.