Jose Mourinho’s clash against former Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti and his former club Real Madrid always seemed like it was destined to be the final match of this summer’s Guinness International Champions Cup. Last night Madrid and Ancelotti were able to get the better of their old boss and their new one’s former club in a 3-1 victory at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium.
Ramires had brought the Blues level after an opening goal from Madrid’s Marcelo, but two additional goals from Cristiano Ronaldo would be the difference. The first being a free just after the first 30 minutes played and later a headed effort to see the Spanish side through on top.
The Blues’ boss was not happy to have lost, but knowing that it is still preseason was more concerned with his players fitness and performance and believed that the two Ronaldo goals could have been avoided through better defensive concentration according to comments in his post-match press conference:
“He's a great player and has scored goals all his life. When he scores it's not big news, when he doesn't it is, but we made two mistakes for both goals.
For the first, we gave away a free-kick in a position where he's happy to have it and then the second goal, I told the players with every cross he likes to try to get into space because he's good in the air.
For me, it's perfect we made mistakes so that we have them to work on. As I said last week, we had five victories in pre-season and zero points. Now we have five victories and one defeat, we still have zero points, it's not a drama.
They play in La Liga, we play in the Premier League, if we meet them in the Champions League and lose it's a different story but a summer tournament is a summer tournament.”
The chance of being able to learn from mistakes made in preseason rather than during matches that count were not the only positives on the night for the manager who was also happy to see some of his younger players have the chance to exposed to high caliber clubs early in their career to allow them more experience to grow on in the future:
"For Marco van Ginkel to play against Real, even in a friendly, is a fantastic experience for him.
I came here to analyse my team, I'm so happy with the mistakes we made and I'm happy with the good things we did.
We came to the US searching for good matches; we had Inter, AC, Real Madrid and Roma. We had the matches we wanted so much and needed so much.”
Chelsea have one more match this coming weekend against AS Roma before packing it in and returning to London to prepare for their opening Premier League fixture against recently promoted Hull City at Stamford Bridge.
