Zidane: “This Super Cup exit isn’t a failure”

Real Madrid won’t be retaining the Spanish Super Cup title that they won in Saudi Arabia last year, but Zinedine Zidane doesn’t believe that the 2-1 defeat to Athletic Club was a failure. When that suggestion was put to him in his post-match press conference, he replied: “No, it’s not a failure. Failure is not trying and not giving everything. But, we gave everything. Life is like this. You can’t always win, but we’ll try to win the next match.”

The coach did admit that the team started the game poorly. He said: “Our first half wasn’t good, but they only had two chances and scored both of them. In the second half it was completely different. We created chances and hit the woodwork and scored one goal, but we couldn’t get that equaliser.”

One thing that Zidane changed was the positioning of Eden Hazard and Marco Asensio and he spoke about that, saying: “We changed the formation because I didn’t like it and we played with Eden on the left again and Marco on the right. We were better that way.”

Zidane spoke in even more depth about Hazard and about his struggles, saying: “Eden needs to get his confidence back a bit and have a good game and score a goal. It’s little by little. We know the player he is. We need to be patient. I know the fans want to see the best version of him, but there’s a need for patience. He wants to move forward. Today it wasn’t just about Eden, it was about everyone.”