Ronaldo Blames Offside Goals For Real Madrid Defeats

Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo says suggestions of a “crisis” are overblown after Wednesday’s 3-1 defeat to Tottenham, insisting offside goals have led to recent defeats.

The Champions League holders were convincingly beaten by Spurs at Wembley in the Champions League clash, with Ronaldo’s late goal a mere consolation after a Dele Alli double and a Christian Eriksen strike gave the home side the win.

The result came just three days after the Liga champions were beaten 2-1 by Girona, a result that saw them slip eight points adrift of league leaders Barcelona.

Zinedine Zidane insisted there was no reason to panic despite their first back-to-back defeats since January, and Ronaldo was eager to back his coach and feels they have been unlucky to concede illegal goals.

“We’re in a bad patch, we want to change it and that’s what we’ll do,” he told reporters.

“We’re at the start. It’s the ending that counts. There’s a lot of time to improve and I’m sure we can do it.

“Nothing has happened; they are bad spells. We can’t always be okay. We have to be calm – I don’t think the team is playing that badly.

“People try to look for things when you don’t win [but] the team looks confident to me. I speak, I show my face, I’m confident. We’re in a bad moment but things change. When you lose, things aren’t as you want them to be.

“You have to support your teammates. It was a real blow to lose 3-1 today, and in my opinion it’s not a fair reflection of what happened on the pitch, because their first goal was offside.

“It was the same in Girona, their second goal was offside.

“They’re things out of our control, but what we can control is our attitude, run hard, battle, and that’s not been lacking in either of the last two games.

“Things are what they are, you don’t have to hide them and you have to be positive. People forget the good things very quickly.

“It’s never a crisis. We can lose three or four games but it’s never a crisis. You can’t forget what we’ve done.”

There have been claims Madrid’s form this season has suffered due to a lack of options in the squad, with Pepe, Alvaro Morata and James Rodriguez all having been allowed to leave in the transfer window.

Ronaldo believes a lack of experienced players is perhaps hampering their efforts but also highlighted injuries to the likes of Dani Carvajal and Gareth Bale as key problems.

“The players who came in have a lot of potential,” he said. “Pepe, Morata, James made us stronger but the guys now are younger.

“We’re also missing Carvajal, Bale… it’s not a worse squad but we have less experience and that’s very important. It’s not an excuse. We can’t give up.”