13-times European champion Real Madrid faced Chelsea in the semi-finals of the Champions League 2020-21 season. The youthful Chelsea squad were expected to give a tough fight, but not many expected the experienced Real Madrid team to give up almost without any fight.
Chelsea thoroughly deserved this win and now they will face Manchester City on 29th May in the Champions League final that will take place at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul. This will be the third time in total that two Premier League sides will meet in a UCL final.
Read: What went wrong for Real Madrid in the UCL semi-final against Chelsea?
So let’s have a look at the reaction of the coach and players after the match:
Zinedine Zidane [Real Madrid coach]
“Eden has to play. He has to regain his confidence, little by little, by playing.”
“We played a semi-final and the players were prepared. If they played, it means that they were prepared. We can be proud of my players, we have tried and we have come this far, one step away from the final.”
“Chelsea played a great game and qualified and they are to be congratulated. We can say that they deserved the victory. We tried, but in the end they deserved to win and go through.”
“We lost many duels and we lacked something. We tried. It was a very demanding game. We could have been more aggressive in attack. We had no chances to score a goal and they had their chances and that’s the way it is.”
“It was something new, but [Vinicius] could play there. With three centre-backs, the idea was that. He already played there against Getafe. This time the team had to be organised in this way. His ideal position is wide left, it’s true, but Vini can also play on the right.”
Casemiro [Real Madrid player]
“In the first 25 minutes we played better and we had two chances with Karim [Benzema]. Then they played better and they had more opportunities, but there is no going back. I think Chelsea were superior and played better than us.”
“Today we showed that what we achieved [in the past] was history, as it is not easy to win the Champions League. Today we showed once again that it is not easy to win this.”
“We have to think about the next game. After a year full of injuries, sacrifices, casualties, COVID-19, no fans… we have tried. But they were better. We can no longer grieve, we have to think about Sevilla. We have to think about the league now.”
Mason Mount [Chelsea player]
“I saw one of their players [Toni Kroos] say before that he doesn’t lose sleep over individuals. But as a team, they need to lose sleep over us as a team.”
“We give so much, we defend for our lives. You saw that in not many chances that we gave away. We are solid and we need to keep that going.”
“I can’t put into words. Great performance tonight. It was a tough, tough game. They’re going to come and give it everything but we worked hard.”
“We should’ve probably had about five! But the most important thing is we won tonight. We want to go into every game winning it.”
“We gave everything and we had that desire to win first half. We had a couple of opportunities where we won the ball and should’ve scored but we got the one late on and it’s great.”
“We haven’t won nothing yet. Hopefully we’ve got two massive cup finals and hopefully we can win.”
