Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane took full responsibility for Wednesday's shock 0-2 defeat at Wolfsburg in their Champions League quarterfinal first leg.
Madrid went into the game as huge favourites after Saturday's La Liga Clasico win at Barcelona, but were soon 2-0 down through Ricardo Rodriguez's penalty and Max Arnold's close range strike after a lovely team move ripped open the visiting defence.
The Spanish giants still had over an hour to score at least one away goal, but Cristiano Ronaldo had an off night and Wolfsburg goalkeeper Diego Benaglio was comfortable throughout.
The Galactico coach told his postmatch news conference that he personally needed to analyse what he and the team got wrong after a result which came as a total surprise.
"I have all the responsibility, total, as coach," Zidane said. "We will watch the game again, and analyse it. I am very proud of my players. I am responsible, and must look to see what happened. And I will do that. We had chances, the only thing is we did not get what we wanted here. It is 2-0 and we must accept that. It hurts as we knew it would be difficult, but nobody, including me, expected this."
By Zidane's estimation, Madrid's first-half performance was not up to the required intensity or commitment for this stage of the competition.
"We did not start with the necessary intensity for a Champions League game," he said. "We made that mistake. I am not going to go crazy now, as what we have done recently is positive. But this game we cannot be happy with. We will analyse it. It could be [due to] Saturday's game, physically we have suffered, above all in the first half. We lacked, above all, mobility in all the lines, at the start."
Zidane surprisingly started Danilo at right-back and then removed midfield playmakers Luka Modric and Toni Kroos for Isco and James Rodriguez to little avail as the visitors had just one shot on target during the entire second half.
"Danilo had to play too, to rest Dani, and that's it," Zidane said. "I ask the same from them both. I could have changed other players. Nothing to do with Luka, but I had to change something. Then we took off Toni, put in James, you want to see how things will change, nothing else. Today the substitutes did not work, they did not make a difference, for us to score a goal."
Italian referee Gianluca Rocchi enraged Madrid with his penalty decision, after Casemiro had clashed with Andre Schurrle in the box, leading to the opening goal.
"I don't know if it was a penalty, or not," Zidane said. "I am not getting into that."
Madrid's awful night also featured another injury for centre-forward Karim Benzema, who limped out of the action before half time with what appeared to be a knee problem.
"I was asking him if he was okay, and until he said he could not continue, he stayed on the pitch," Zidane said. "When he said he was bad, I changed him."
Los Blancos have a history of stirring second-leg comebacks at their Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, and Zidane said he remained confident that his team could turn the tie around and reach the last four when the teams meet again in Madrid next Tuesday.
"The only thing we can do is be calm," he said. "I am not going to go crazy, the players neither. We are hurting, as to lose always hurts. But now we know we have chance to change this. Being Real Madrid we know we can turn this around at the Bernabeu with our fans."