Wounded Real vow to seal defensive leaks

REAL MADRID captain Raul says his side have to learn from their mistakes after they were swept aside 3-0 by Olympique Lyon in their opening Champions League tie on Tuesday.

“We knew that Lyon were a good side, the difference was they took their chances. Now we have a few days to study the areas we need to work on,” said Raul.

Lyon stunned the nine-times European champions with three goals in the opening 31 minutes from Norway striker John Carew, Juninho and France forward Sylvain Wiltord.

As in Saturday’s home defeat to Celta Vigo in the league where they lost 3-2, set pieces proved Real’s undoing.

Carew flicked on a Juninho free-kick for the opening goal after 21 minutes and the Brazilian midfielder doubled the advantage with another free-kick from almost 3o metres, soon after.

“Set pieces are very important and today, as against Celta, we conceded goals from them. We need to work on putting this aspect of our game right,” said Raul.

“There is still a long way to go and we hope this suffering will be a positive for us later on.”

Goalkeeper Iker Casillas, who saved a first-half penalty, also recognised the need to work on the defence but did not believe the result was a fair reflection of the game.

“Anyone who didn’t see the game would think it was a mad result,” said Casillas.

“But no one needs to say anything to us because we are also very upset about it. Our luck will change though, we just had a tremendous amount of bad luck.”

Coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo thought his team played better than they had at the weekend.

“Although it was a particularly bad result, we have to remain calm because the competition has only just started and we can’t afford to be demoralised,” said Luxemburgo.

Real lost their opening game in the Champions League last year 3-0 to Bayer Leverkusen but went on to finish second in their group.

Luxemburgo can look forward to the return of injured France midfielder Zinedine Zidane and Brazilian striker Ronaldo, who was serving the first game of a two-match ban.

“They are players who make a difference in a game,” Luxemburgo added. “When Ronaldo isn’t on the pitch the opposition defenders are more relaxed. The same goes for Zidane, but they weren’t here today and we had to replace them.”