Javier Tebas defends Sergio Ramos over doping allegations

LaLiga president Javier Tebas has come out somewhat in defense of Sergio Ramos in response to the allegations made in Der Spiegel’s doping report released recently.

“I’ve known Florentino Perez’s opinion on this topic very well for years and he is a man very obsessed with the idea that there shouldn’t be doping in sport, even less in football.”

“I don’t have any doubt that things are clear there. I will have to look at it because I got back late last night from traveling and I don’t know.”

“When these things happen it depends on the Spanish Agency for Protection of Health in Sport, if they didn’t open a case then we won’t have any knowledge of it which I think gives the relevant explanation.”

Tebas has somewhat sided with Real Madrid here by saying Perez is vehemently against doping in football.

Obviously, he is covering himself a bit by saying he hasn’t really looked into the case as of yet. We’ll see if he changes his thoughts after taking on his own investigation of these allegations against Ramos.

Solari responds to Real Madrid’s 3-0 loss to Eibar

Real Madrid manager Santiago Solari was interviewed by beIN LaLiga following Real Madrid’s loss to Eibar on Saturday.

“We were not good, evidently, and we accept that. We must improve for sure. Eibar played very well, we must congratulate them.”

“The result is tough, for sure, as we expected to come here and win. We had won the previous four games. We must work to improve and fix the things that were not right today.”

“It is not about finding people to blame. We have things to fix, things to do ourselves. But everything is fixable. We had won four straight games, done some things very well, and so we must return to that.”

There really wasn’t one sole player to point at after the loss, the whole team was pretty woeful against Eibar.

Their four-match win streak was quite impressive after the failures under Lopetegui, albeit against lower quality sides. Eibar were 13th when Real went into this match at the Ipurua, this match really should not have been much different than the previous ones.

They seemed to be highly out-of-sync coming out of the international break and they need to be able to regroup to face off against Roma on Tuesday evening.

Courtois gives post-match thoughts on loss to Eibar

Thibaut Courtois was interviewed after the loss to Eibar

“It was a difficult game at a very tough ground where the opposition press high up and they just didn’t let us play from the back. They were far more aggressive and intense on loose balls and that was the difference”

“We discussed it half-time but we were a bit slow out of the blocks in the second half. At 3-0 the game was as good as dead but we tried our best.

“It’s not the image of Real Madrid that we want to give. Now we’ve got another game in three days’ time and we have to face the music and win in Roma.”

In the first half I touched the ball on to the post and I was unlucky with their first goal. I try and do all I can to help the team. Now we have to look over everything with the coach and see where we can improve.”

It hasn’t been a good time for Courtois as of yet at Real Madrid. He’s conceded quite a bit of goals, not necessarily all his fault considering how bad the backline in front of him have been playing.

Real need to shake this first loss under Solari off and be able to bounce back and get the win in Rome on Tuesday. It certainly isn’t time to start panicking again, but there is concern about what will happen with this team moving forward as they appear unpredictable.