Real Madrid star midfielder Toni Kroos admitted Real Madrid are “all messed up” this season after Zinedine Zidane’s side suffered a 2-0 loss to Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday and are on the brink of Champions League elimination at the group stage.
“It’s all messed up, this season we’re struggling to score goals. It’s not a physical issue. I’m fine but when you lose it’s all negative. We have to keep working and try to win the last game. If you are on a winning run you’ve obviously got more confidence than if you’re losing – that’s normal. As a team, you feel better when you win, but we have to win again; continue working,” Kroos, who is yet to score this season for Los Blancos, was quoted by Goal, in a post-match interview after the loss in Ukraine.
Kroos said in the same interview that his side failed to believe that they could turn bounce back after Shakhtar scored the goals.
“It’s tough to leave here with a 2-0 scoreline – at Inter we scored early and here it was nearly the same. Maybe we weren’t quite as good but we did produce a good first half. Once you’re 1-0 down everything costs you a bit more – then at 2-0 maybe we failed to believe totally that we could overturn it. We tried until the end though,” added Kroos.
Madrid have won just one of their last five matches in all competitions, and are now occupying third place in Group B and level on points with Shakhtar in the Champions League.
Despite the loss to Shakhtar and with only one game in hand, Luka Modric refuses to give up on his side’s chances of making it to the last-16.
“There’s still a game to go, we’ll see what happens in Inter’s match and see what we have to do in the last game. Madrid have shown that when we need to win, we can do it, but we have to show it on the pitch because words aren’t enough. We lacked the consistency we’ve always had. We have a great game, two bad ones, a good one, two bad ones. We lack that consistency and we have to improve as soon as possible,” added Modric in a post-match interview.