Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti has revealed that he and his players will not give up on the La Liga title despite a shocking 2-1 defeat to Valencia at the Santiago Bernabeu.
The defending champions suffered their fifth loss of the season to dent their title hopes ahead of the defining part of the season.
Vinicius Junior missed from the penalty spot in the 11th minute.
Valencia opened the scoring through Diakhaby who powered in a glancing header to make it 1-0 in the 15th minute.
Vinicius equalised after the restart before Hugo Duro scored the winning goal for Valencia in the 95th minute.
Ancelotti claimed that Real Madrid does not deserve to lose against Valencia.
He said: “We have to take into account the small details, like the missed penalty and then the fact that they conceded a set piece. And they disallowed a goal. These are small details that can change the dynamic of the match.
“Valencia played their game, with fantastic work. But Madrid deserved to win, without a doubt. Can things be improved? Of course they can. It’s not a matter of attitude; you can criticize whatever you want, but I have the right to see what I see. We’ve had deserved defeats, but today wasn’t deserved. Today there was no lack of attitude.
“It’s much more difficult to fight for the league, but we have only one idea, to do well until the end. We still have a chance. It’s less after this game, but we have to fight until the end.
“We created a ton of chances and were very close to scoring. We may have lacked effectiveness, and in recovering the ball, we conceded very little.
“It’s true that opponents don’t need much to score against us in these moments. We took risks to try to win; a draw wouldn’t have been enough for us, and we got through that counterattack. We did well offensively. We lacked some effectiveness.”
Goalkeeper Fran Gonzalez made his debut for Real Madrid due to the absence of Thibaut Courtois, and Andriy Lunin. Ancelotti confirmed that they will be back against Arsenal.
He said: “Today Courtois trained and felt good, and tomorrow he’ll train too Lunin, with the doubt with Courtois, we didn’t risk him. He’ll have two or three days to try to recover, and then we’ll see for Tuesday. I think we could have both of them back.”
The victory was Valencia’s first win at the Santiago Bernabeu since 2008, and also their first away win of the season.
They are now seven pints clear of the relegation zone after struggling all season.
Valencia coach, Carlos Corberán dedicated the victory to the club’s supporters.
He said: “To get a result here you have to do everything perfectly. The greatest satisfaction is for the fans, who’ve suffered so much.
“I know what this club is, and we owed the fans a result like this. They’ve shown us great support, and this result is for them. We hadn’t won away for a long time. The fans have suffered. We wanted to give something back to them.”
Valencia now occupy the 15th position on the log with 34 points from 30 matches.
