José Mourinho looked solemn and resigned when analysing the draw against Osasuna, which leaves his team increasingly further adrift of Barcelona. “You never hear me making excuses about injured players, and you won’t this time with the suspensions”, he remarked.
Real Madrid may well finish the weekend even further behind the Catalan side: “I don’t want to get into why we could be 18 points behind, because it’s a long story and it’s not worth it. Things happened in the early fixtures which I don’t want to talk about. Then, when there’s a big gap, one team is playing with no pressure and it’s the opposite for the other team. But what happened in the first 6 or 7 games is something I don’t want to talk about.”
Mou mentioned Casillas: “I liked the way Iker played against Celta. He did what a goalkeeper at a big club has to do – win points for his team, and in this case win a knock-out round. Today he barely touched the ball.”
“I was happy with the team’s attitude. I think that Albiol and Fabio Coentrao deserve a mention because they haven’t played for a long time,” he said.
Real Madrid did not have many chances on goal against the bottom-rung side: “We know it’s not easy to attack here because of the way the opponent plays. Even so, we did enough to score without having many chances.”
