Leonid Slutsky: Our mistakes cost us the game in Madrid

CSKA Moscow manager Leonid Slutsky admitted his team wasn’t at its best in the Champions league 1/8 final second leg 4-1 defeat to Real Madrid.

Argentinean striker Gonzalo Higuain opened the scoring for the home side, and Cristiano Ronaldo doubled the lead after the break as his swerving shot surprised CSKA goalkeeper Chepchugov, who parried the ball into his own net. CSKA wasted a number of good chances, most of which fell to Seydou Doumbia, and Karim Benzema then scored the fastest goal by a substitute in the history of the competition – just 29 seconds after coming on in place of Higuain. Late on Tosic pulled one back for the visitors with a superb strike that went in off the bar. But as the Russian team pushed forward to get another, Ronaldo caught them on the counter, converting Benzema’s low cross.

«We had to play our best match in order to get a result here, we couldn’t afford to make mistakes,» the Red Army boss said after the game, speaking to Sports.ru reporter Denis Romanstov.

«In the first half we kept our shape, tried to catch them on the counter, but made too many individual errors. I wouldn’t place the blame on Chepchugov, though – we have to show support as he made some good saves today,» Slutsky added.

«I chose to replace Musa with Mamaev as the Nigerian was below par today and we needed to attack. Honda is still recovering from a knock, so we decided to not to risk him ahead of the Spartak match,» he concluded.