Real Madrid’s awful start of the season continued, with Real Betis stealing a 1-0 victory at extra time at the Santiago Bernabeu..
Madrid was playing at home, alongside their talisman Cristiano Ronaldo, who returned for the La Liga after a five match ban.
The defending champions did all was possible to find the net, but they found the goalkeeper of Betis, Antonio Adan and their defence a hard nut to crack.
And with less than 90 seconds to go in the five minute extra time, Betis’s Antonio Sanabria stole a goal in a counter-attack, one of the few chances they had, in the match that Madrid clearly dominated 62-38. And it came after another goal was disallowed for breaching the offside rule.
It was a frustrating day for Madrid as they fell seven points away from rivals Barcelona, who have had a perfect start, bagging all the 15 points in five matches and with Lionel Messi recording nine goals already.
Ronaldo will hope to hit the score-sheet in the next game away at Deportivo Alaves. It was the first time he failed to score in a La Liga match since April.
Coach Zinedine Zidane called for calm after the disastrous night.
The coach underlined his confidence in the team in a the post-match interview “The way we see it, is that the ball just didn’t want to go in today. We had 26 or 27 attempts and in the end, it hasn’t gone in. That’s football. It wasn’t a great performance but it wasn’t too bad either. If you get a goal, it’s a different game. Last year we won games that perhaps we didn’t deserve to win, now it’s gone the other way. We have to stay calm. That’s three games at home and we’ve taken two points from nine”.
“It’s tough to lose Marcelo and concede the goal. Perhaps we didn’t deserve to win the game, but we definitely didn’t deserve to lose it. I know that a lot of people don’t like to hear that when things are going badly, but we’ve got to accept it, remain calm and focus on the next game. La Liga is a long competition and we’re going to make sure there is a sense of calm in the group because we’ll recover from this and I’m sure we’ll have better days”.
