Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has made it clear he didn’t think much of Carlo Ancelotti’s tactics after his side were thrashed 4-0 by Barcelona in El Clasico yesterday.
Los Blancos were far from at their best, with Barca ripping through them as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was in particularly dazzling form at the Bernabeu.
Ancelotti’s side remain top of La Liga and are surely still the clear favourites for the title, but a humiliating result like this could do a lot of damage to the team spirit within the camp.
Courtois was clearly not happy, and pointed fingers at the manager afterwards as he made it clear that the tactical decisions would need to be discussed privately as they simply didn’t work.
The Belgian shot-stopper can often be outspoken on such issues, and it will be interesting to see how Ancelotti responds to these quotes, which very clearly take aim at the Italian tactician for not setting the team up correctly.
“We will have to talk about the tactics internally. They haven’t worked at the start of the game or the second half, we have to discuss it internally, not here,” Courtois told Movistar, as quoted by Sport.
“We played with a false nine in the Copa and hardly had any shots and it was the same here. We started okay, we had a chance with Fede Valverde which Marc ter Stegen saved well, but from there we dropped off.
“We didn’t find the free man playing out and that makes it hard. Then in the second half, we cannot start like that. This badge demands that you fight and in the second half we did not. We could have lost by even more.”