Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger highlighted his team’s mistakes over the entirety of their Champions League tie with Real Madrid after the holders were dumped out of the competition in heartbreaking fashion.
Karim Benzema hit a hat-trick in the first leg at Stamford Bridge, in particular aided by errors from goalkeeper Edouard Mendy and Rudiger for his third goal, before the Blues were only able to win 3-2 after extra-time in Tuesday’s return game.
Rudiger was noticeably incandescent at full-time as Madrid counterpart David Alaba attempted to calm him down, before he gave his reaction to BT Sport.
The German stated: “The positive is that we didn’t give up and not many teams can come here and dominate them as we did.
“But over the two legs, if you make the type of mistakes that we do, you get punished.”
Chelsea put together a stirring comeback at the Bernabeu to briefly lead the tie, thanks to goals from Mason Mount, a Rudiger header, and Timo Werner.
He continued: “That was the game plan, to find the No10s with Ruben [Loftus-Cheek] and Mason between Casemiro finding space. We found it, we got the goal.
“We controlled it, we didn’t panic and I think we did it quite well. In the second-half, we scored goals. We did everything we could, but as I said over the two legs if you make these mistakes - you get punished.”
Rudiger, who is out of contract in the summer, was left ruing the moment of magic from Luka Modric which set up Rodrgyo’s aggregate leveller before Benzema’s extra-time winner as the centre-back lost his footing in the area.
Describing the final moments, he added: “It was a do or die for us, I think before the game not everybody thought we would make it 3-0 but then the individual class comes to light with Modric and Benzema. Now we are [out].”
