Peter Bosz has described Borussia Dortmund’s winless Champions League campaign as a disappointment after Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to Real Madrid at the Bernabeu.
“We started very poorly,” the 54-year-old told his postgame news conference, adding: “But eventually you could see a team that can play good football and work together. We also showed that we have a lot of great players and it will be good for Dortmund’s future when more return from injury after the winter break.”
“We wanted to play more compact and you could see that we were not pushing as high up the field as we usually do against Real Madrid,” Bosz explained. “But if you play a bit deeper, you have to be all the more aggressive in those zones. We failed to be that and thus Real Madrid had it very easy to score twice on us. Afterwards, we had a lot of scoring opportunities but only converted one in the first half. In the second half, we started well [with the equaliser].”
Bosz said: “Obviously, we wanted to remain in the Champions League after the turn of the year, but I have to say that we are deservedly not in this competition anymore. Now we have to do everything to reach as far as possible in the Europa League.”
However, the Dortmund coach also took heart from his team’s performance at the Spanish capital.
“We showed again, that we can also compete against such a team at the Bernabeu and played some great football in some phases of the game. We want to find back to winning ways.”
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