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REAL MADRID 1-1 LYON

Guti blames Real Madrid exit on lack of teamwork

March 10, 2010

Guti believes Real Madrid's failure to perform as a team was the reason for their Champions League exit to Lyon on Wednesday night.

Guti

AlbertoSereno/GettyImages

Guti cuts a frustrated figure against Lyon

Real Madrid 1-1 Lyon
• Champions League Gallery

Having lost the first leg 1-0 in France, Madrid made a strong start at the Bernabeu and looked to be on course to overturn that result when Cristiano Ronaldo opened the scoring in the sixth minute.

Despite a host of chances, though, they were unable to extend their advantage and Lyon emerged much stronger after the break. Hope of progress was then all but ended 15 minutes from time when Miralem Pjanic made it 1-1 on the night.

The 2-1 aggregate defeat means Madrid have failed to reach the quarter-finals of the competition since 2004 and Guti believes the club's stars did not work together on the night.

"It's a real shame," he told Telemadrid. "We showed once again that, in the big games, we are unable to go for the kill.

"We should have played more like a team instead of playing like a group of individuals. In the second half, we didn't play as we should.

"They started to attack when they saw that we weren't pressing we had before half-time. That was the time to be a team. Now, we can only think about La Liga, which is all we have left."

Defender Alvaro Arbeloa said on the club's official website: "We could have scored as many as three goals in the first half, but we weren't able to finish off shots. We fell to an inferior team, which makes it more painful than ever. We are a team so we are all at fault. We lacked a bit of unity and aggessiveness. We feel like we didn't show up in the second half."

Goalkeeper Iker Casillas added: "We are upset but need to remain calm. We need to be prudent. Over the next few days we will assess what has happened this season, but from here on out we need to focus on La Liga."




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