Carlo Ancelotti: "Serious defensive errors led to our defeat against Barcelona."

Spain's La Liga Matchday 35 featured a central match in which Real Madrid faced their fiercest rival, Barcelona, and suffered a dramatic 4-3 defeat. After the match, Real Madrid's head coach Carlo Ancelotti attended the press conference, where he thoroughly addressed the reasons for the team's defeat and the situation with individual players.

"Unfortunately today, we made many serious mistakes in defense. This created easy opportunities for our opponent to score goals. Our defensive performance was simply unacceptable, even for ourselves," stated the Italian coach.

At the same time, Ancelotti expressed complete satisfaction with the team's attacking actions, giving high praise to their offensive performance:

"In attack, we performed exactly as planned; we executed very good and efficient attacks. Kylian Mbappe played exceptionally well today, scoring three goals and achieving a hat-trick. We had sufficient chances to score even more goals. However, as I emphasized earlier, our defensive mistakes prevented us from securing the victory."

Ancelotti also pointed out structural issues in the team's defensive line, noting that they simultaneously lost five key defenders:

"We had structural issues in our defense. Five of our main defenders could not help us due to various reasons, and this situation negatively impacted our game today."

In addition, the coach explained the reason behind substituting Vinicius Junior:

"The reason Vinicius was substituted was due to pain in his ankle area. Although Vinicius himself wanted to continue the match, we decided to take a cautious approach to prevent his injury from worsening and thus substituted him."

Regarding Rodrigo Goes’ performance today, Ancelotti provided the following explanation:

"Rodrigo felt considerable weakness before the game. He hadn't fully recovered from a recent illness, so we didn't expect him to deliver a big performance today. However, it's not an issue; I am satisfied with Rodrigo. With his professionalism, he's bringing great benefits to the team."

Currently, Real Madrid sits in second place in the Spanish championship standings with 75 points. The team is seven points behind the leader Barcelona, with only three matchdays left in the season.

News