Thibaut Courtois pulled no punches after Real Madrid were crushed by Paris Saint-Germain in their FIFA Club World Cup semi-finalon Wednesday night, with the goalkeeper claiming: “We were late to every situation.”
Outspoken goalkeeper Courtois said sorry to Real fans after Champions League winners PSG humbled them 4-0 at New Jersey’s Met Life Stadium.
A first-half brace from Fabian Ruiz either side of Ousmane Dembele’s latest goal put the French side in complete control before sub Goncalo Ramos added icing on the cake late on.
And it left Xabi Alonso stunned under the searing US sun with the new Real head coach already facing a postmortem before he takes charge of a La Liga game.
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Real were without new signings Dean Huijsen, through suspension, and injured Trent Alexander-Arnold but a still strong team were entirely outclassed by freewheeling PSG.
Courtois, however, made it clear that the players simply failed to follow their boss’ gameplan because they did not press PSG as a collective and early errors left them with an insurmountable mountain to climb.
“We want to apologise to the fans,” Courtois said. “What was the problem? We didn’t press as a team. There were two big mistakes at the start of the game and that affected us.
“We failed to follow Xabi’s plan for the game. We need to take time and analyse it, but from what I saw, we were always arriving late to every situation.”

PSG now face Chelsea in Sunday’s final with the winners banking £97m for a month’s work. Luis Enrique’s team are odds-on favourites to prevail over Enzo Maresca’s side.
And after the Real thrashing PSG boss Enrique said: “I think we started the game very well and we are very happy with the performance. With those conditions it’s tough but we are in a special moment in a special season.
“We are going to try and win the final. We just have to take one more step against a good team like Chelsea but we are almost there and we want to make history for our club.”
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