Mourinho: "Coentrao has played a good match"

Mourinho attending the press conference

"I do not know if there is failure on the Mario Gomez's goal, I am away and could not see it. But I know Coentrao has made a good match. He had a difficult mission and fulfilled. I hate the question because there are other players who have failed in other games and nothing is said". In this way, Jose Mourinho, coach of Real Madrid, answered the question about the mistake of Fabio Coentrao in Bayern's second goal, which put the semifinal 2-1 and obligates Real Madrid to come back at the Bernabeu on Wednesday.

Still, Mourinho is optimistic about the second leg: "I am optimistic. I believe a draw would have been fairer, but that is football for you: whoever scores wins. It does not matter if you do so in the first or last minute. This result is not awful because it does not force us to make an historic comeback at home. We will have to earn a normal result and I think we are ready to respond. We will start preparing for it after Saturday's match. Real Madrid always play to win and the team is ready to respond in a game in which the crowd will surely want to help".

Furthermore, the Portuguese coach considered that his team did not deserve to lose the match: "We wanted to win tonight. We conceded a goal from a set piece in the first half, during which we played our best. We then drew the score and we felt it was difficult to win even though we did our best at times. Both sides made mistakes and Bayern scored when the it seemed the game would end in a draw. Their first goal was offside, but I cannot criticise the referee for that. I do not feel negative about it".

Finally, Mourinho referred to the fitness of his players: "This is April and we have reached this far after playing very demanding games that we were forced to win, so it is normal for some players to fail to be in optimum form. I think this is normal at this stage".