Jose Mourinho turned his fire on his own players after Real Madrid's nervy late win over Elche, warning that his side lost control of the match and handed their opponents a route back into it. There was, he said, plenty still to fix.
Madrid looked to be cruising against La Liga's bottom side, then made hard work of it and clung on for a 3-2 win on Tuesday evening at the Manuel Martinez Valero in the sixth round.
That laboured victory left the club's supporters uneasy ahead of Sunday's derby against Atletico Madrid at the Metropolitano.
"We left the spaces"
"Only three points," Mourinho told reporters in comments carried by Marca. "Of course, after the first half the feeling was that we would score three or four or five goals in the second half, but we lowered the intensity and gave the opponents big spaces."
He added: "I tried to give the midfield more solidity by bringing on Jude Bellingham and Brahim Diaz, but they scored a goal, and in these stadiums, with this crowd presence, a team that looks dead can come back to life."
"We can and we don't"
On the changes he made in the closing stages, Mourinho explained: "We have a lot of talent, and we took the maximum risk, and the players had a feeling that we could not lose. We played some very good final minutes."
The Portuguese praised his side's mentality, but flagged the problem that still nags at him. "The players are united and enthusiastic, and there is friendship and commitment. My only criticism is that we can kill matches off and we don't, and we gave a team that looked dead a chance to come back to life."
Fixture pressure
Asked about rotation amid a packed schedule, Mourinho said: "We made changes, and Mbappe and Konate are the only two who played the full matches against Inter, Rayo and Elche."
He added: "Now we have to get some rest, then start preparing for the match on Thursday."
The problem of slacking off
Mourinho then turned to the lulls that keep creeping into his side's performances. "The problem seems clear to me. There are matches that look as though they are over, but they are not over."
He continued: "The only explanation I find is that we consider them easy matches, and we don't kill them off. There are matches we don't settle, and it seems we go from the feeling of ease to losing control."
"In stadiums like these that are full, and with wonderful fans, things become difficult," he went on. "And the good thing is that when the difficulty increases, the team reacts and wins, and that is the most important thing."
He signed off the point with a joke: "And the good thing too is that no one gets bored in Real Madrid's matches, because they are very entertaining."
Praise for Espi
Carlos Espi struck the winner, and Mourinho was full of praise. "He is putting in a good performance, and he is a player with great motivation. In front of him is a player who is not normal (Mbappe), and playing with both of them together is not easy, because we don't have traditional players on the flanks for a 4-4-2 system."
He explained: "In the end we risked everything, because a draw does not serve us."
Diomande is developing
Yan Diomande also earned a nod from his manager. "He is developing," Mourinho said. "He has a great capacity for work and intelligence, because it is not easy to play 85 minutes while carrying a yellow card. He did a great job, and I am pleased with him."
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Defensive concern
Real Madrid have conceded in every match, and Mourinho was asked why. "I very much like my team to score goals, but I also like to control matches. I don't like us to gift the opponents chances."
He added: "We can concede a goal from a situation that has nothing to do with the context of the match, but today the goals came because we lost control of the play."
"Not an indispensable player"
Mourinho refused to cast Arda Guler as untouchable. "There is no indispensable player. When I make the changes, it is because we were losing control."
He explained: "Arda began to lower his intensity, because he was playing in the number 10 role, and that role requires covering the whole pitch."
A match with three faces
On the midfield, Mourinho said: "When the team was good, they were very good. We got out of the pressing well and with great quality, but our match has two faces."
Then he corrected himself: "Or three faces, to be more precise, because the ending was simply: either we kill the match off or we die in it."
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