Lahm: We didn’t play as though we had lost our rhythm. We dominated Real Madrid at their ground for 95 minutes, and they are not the kind of team you can play casually against. Our team know what is at stake. We were positive on the pitch. In key situations we lacked a bit of luck; perhaps that will be back come Tuesday. We’ll pull out all the stops in the return leg. Neither team managed to stake their claim for the final in Madrid. When you’re 1-0 down, you have to make sure you don’t concede a second goal and we did that well. At the end of the match we had more good opportunities to score an away goal.
Question: This result plays into the hands of a counterattacking side like Real. How big a risk is it that Bayern will fall into their trap in the second leg?
Lahm: That risk is always there. As last night proved, you can never keep a team like Real completely at bay - they’ll always create chances. But we’ll try our very best.
As told to DFB.de
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On Wednesday evening, Bayern Munich suffered their first away defeat of their 2013/2014 UEFA Champions League campaign after losing 1-0 to Real Madrid in the first leg of their semi-final. The defending champions now face a tough task to reach the final in Lisbon on 24 May. In today’s interview on DFB.de, Bayern captain Philipp Lahm analyses the match at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu and rates his team’s chances in next Tuesday’s return leg at the Allianz Arena (live on Sky and ZDF from 20:45 CET).
Question: Philipp Lahm, how do you assess the team’s 1-0 loss in Madrid?
Philipp Lahm: Naturally, we would have liked a different result; that much is clear. In any event, we wanted to score an away goal, and you could see we were doing everything we could to get one. Now we’ll travel home with a 1-0 deficit and give it our all next Tuesday.
Question: How frustrating is it to have so much possession but lose anyway?
Lahm: Not at all. What does frustrating mean anyway? I think it’s great that we travelled to Madrid to play Real – a really top team – and dominated the entire match. For me, that’s extremely positive; the only downside was the result. We still have plenty of options and our team has the quality necessary to win by two goals at home.
Question: Nevertheless, Bayern missed some clear goalscoring chances.
Lahm: We weren’t playing just any team; one that you can easily create a handful of chances against away from home. We had enough chances to score a goal. We’ll do everything we can to push forward at home, but we can’t just ignore our defensive duties. We were very, very strong defensively for large parts of last night’s match.
Question: You previously said that you were not worried despite Bayern’s recent weak patch. Are you still as calm ahead of the return leg?
Lahm: We didn’t play as though we had lost our rhythm. We dominated Real Madrid at their ground for 95 minutes, and they are not the kind of team you can play casually against. Our team know what is at stake. We were positive on the pitch. In key situations we lacked a bit of luck; perhaps that will be back come Tuesday. We’ll pull out all the stops in the return leg. Neither team managed to stake their claim for the final in Madrid. When you’re 1-0 down, you have to make sure you don’t concede a second goal and we did that well. At the end of the match we had more good opportunities to score an away goal.
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Question: This result plays into the hands of a counterattacking side like Real. How big a risk is it that Bayern will fall into their trap in the second leg?
Lahm: That risk is always there. As last night proved, you can never keep a team like Real completely at bay - they’ll always create chances. But we’ll try our very best.
As told to DFB.de
