Betis defeat was Real Madrid’s worst game of the season, admits Zinedine Zidane

With just eleven games left in the season, Barcelona sit atop the La Liga table with two points separating them and Real Madrid. A win against Real Betis would have seen the Los Blancos re-take the lead after Barcelona took it back with a 1-0 win against Real Sociedad. However, while Sidnei’s opener for Real Betis was quickly cancelled out by Karim Benzema, there was nothing Real Madrid could do about Cristian Tello’s late winner.

It saw the Los Blancos drop to second and manager Zinedine Zidane went on to admit that his side were not at the races on Sunday and that he takes a large part of the blame for that, being the coach of the team. The Frenchman also asserted that this was Real Madrid’s worst performance in a long time as they struggled to threaten Real Betis more than once or twice.

"I think we played a bad game, from beginning to end. It's a shame, because we had the chance to play a good game and we didn't. We didn't play at all. I don't have an explanation. I'm the coach and when things don't go well, or we don't do what we'd talked about, I'm responsible. It was our worst game of the season," Zidane said in his post-match news conference.

“Defensively, offensively, our energy, we didn't have enough mobility to cause the opponent problems. We conceded two goals, but what annoys me most is what we did with the ball."