Real Madrid suffered a shock 2-0 loss to Wolfsburg as goals from Ricardo Rodriguez and Maximillian Arnold left Madrid with an uphill task in the second leg. The famed trio of Bale, Benzema and Ronaldo had a night to forget with the Frenchman even being withdrawn because of an injury scare.
Here is how various players and the two managers reacted after yesterday’s big Champions League match:
Wolfsburg manager Dieter Hecking hailed his side’s performance and he also praised youngster Bruno Henrique who was instrumental to Wolfsburg’s good performance last night.
"Tuesday I looked into your eyes and nobody believed in what I said," Hecking said. "But you see, anything is possible in football.
"You have to put a lot of energy in your game when you play against a top team like Madrid. If Madrid open the door for us, we have to barge through it.
"The penalty? There was contact so it's a clear spot kick for me.
"Bruno Henrique was one of the key players tonight. We wanted to surprise Real with this player."
Wolfsburg centre-back Naldo who was one of the best players last night echoed his manager’s sentiments.
"We showed that we are a team. And we showed that we can beat anyone if we focus on our own performance," Naldo told Sky.
"We received a lot of criticism after the defeat versus Bayer Leverkusen, but we put in a sensational team effort.
"But we must now also show what we can do against Mainz in the Bundesliga and in the second leg in Madrid."
Goalscorer Arnold had a cheeky reply when asked about his clash with Marcelo in the second half.
He said: "Madrid put us under constant pressure, but we acted united and defended as a team."
"Winning 2-0 is great and we have a chance of reaching the next round now.
"What happened with Marcelo? I told him that I wanted to have beautiful hair like him. ... Things like this are part of football. Everything is forgotten after the match."
Meanwhile, Draxler who had an amazing game last night, cautioned against getting too excited with this wonderful result.
"We are enjoying the moment," Draxler said. "We put in a superb performance, despite our recent performances. We were prolific in front of goal.
"But we cannot afford to get complacent and [think we] are already through to the semifinals."
Meanwhile on the other side, Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane took full responsibility for the loss.
"I have all the responsibility, total, as coach," Zidane said. "We will watch the game again, and analyse it. I am very proud of my players. I am responsible, and must look to see what happened. And I will do that. We had chances, the only thing is we did not get what we wanted here. It is 2-0 and we must accept that. It hurts as we knew it would be difficult, but nobody, including me, expected this."
Brazilian left-back Marcelo was determined to fight back in the second leg.
"We've got 90 minutes to come at home and we won't be giving up."
Welsh superstar Gareth Bale meanwhile took to Twitter to provide encouragement to the Real Madrid fans.
Danilo had a really poor game for Real Madrid and Squawka’s stats did not hesitate to point out what a bad game the Madrid right-back had:
Real Madrid defender Pepe was confident that his side could turn it around.
Speaking to Real Madrid’s official website, he said:
"It's sad to lose a game in this way. We've got to make a comeback and we've got another game to turn it in our favour. We had a bad 20 minutes, which they capitalised on and we didn't put our chances away. We must congratulate our opponents, who performed well in the first half. We didn't get off to a good start and in a competition as important as the Champions League, you end up paying dearly for that".
Young starlet Jese felt that Real Madrid’s Bale deserved a penalty:
"It was a penalty on Bale and he didn't award it. Sometimes those decisions go for you and at other times they go against you. We need to be united as a team to turn this around".
He also said that they would give everything at home to turn the tie around.
"They're strong at home and losing games is part of football. We tried here and we've now got another game at the Bernabéu. With the support of our fans, we can turn it around. We're a great team and I'm sure that we're going to do it. We'll give everything at the Bernabéu, for the fans and for ourselves".
The magnitude of the task facing Real Madrid can be seen by this Tweet from Opta Jose.
