Quesada left fuming as Real Madrid “stop believing” in hefty Barcelona defeat
Quesada left fuming as Real Madrid “stop believing” in hefty Barcelona defeat Pau Quesada did not hold back as he reflected on Real Madrid’s humiliating 2-6 defeat to Barcelona in the first leg of their UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday. Barça roared into an early lead with just six minutes played at the Estadio Alfredo di Stéfano and never really looked back, responding quickly to both of Linda Caicedo’s goals to secure a hefty advantage ahead of next Thursday’s second leg at the Spotify Camp Nou. Speaking in his post-match press conference after the loss, Quesada apologised to fans and insisted: “I don’t think that they deserved the way that we played today.
We were far from the version of ourselves that we wanted. “Against a great opponent, you can’t afford to lose focus twice in the game because they’ll make you pay for it. It was a Real Madrid performance that we didn’t want to see, that we wanted to move away from.
The 33-year-old revealed: “What angers me the most is that we stopped believing in what we were doing after conceding. You can concede but you can’t stop believing and you can’t stop doing what you’ve been working on. We get a bit down and that’s partly what sets us apart from the teams that are fighting to win the Champions League.
“I think there’s some real distance between us and we’ve got to accept that. They showed that they’re a cut above us in terms of both pace and mental strength. They concede a goal and they don’t fall apart; when we concede, we struggle to carry on.
We need to turn things around and that’s what we’ll try to do this Sunday. Today the problem wasn’t only the result, but the feeling we’re left with. “We’ve been left with a sour taste in our mouths and we can change that on Sunday,” he said, with this weekend’s Liga F meeting coming as the second of three consecutive clashes between the clubs.