Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, coach of Real Madrid, believes that his team’s philosophy of high pressure was in his favor during the confrontation against Liverpool, England, and contributed to the royal club reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
French top scorer Karim Benzema scored the winning goal for Real against his guest Liverpool on Wednesday evening in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, after winning the first leg at Anfield 5-2, to outperform the Spanish club 6-2 in the aggregate of the two matches.
Ancelotti told Movistar: The high pressure cost them a lot, because Luka Modric and Toni Kroos are good at dealing with this type of match.
Real qualified for the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the 19th time in its history, surpassing Barcelona, who achieved the same achievement 18 times, and only lagging behind Bayern Munich, the record holder, by reaching this stage of the continental championship 21 times.
Ancelotti talked about not making any changes in his team’s ranks after Benzema’s goal in the 78th minute, and said: The team was performing well, there was no need for change. I wanted to keep the changes to kill the match if we had problems at the end.
He explained: I liked the team from a psychological point of view, in a match like this when you are ahead by three goals, this may lead to a decline in your performance, but we did not do that.
