Modric “Still Far Away From Challenging Champions League”

Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric says that the club are still a long distance away from being potential challengers for the Champions League title. The Croatian came out with a statement after the club managed to just narrowly get into the semifinals of the Champions League. They have made it after beating Borussia Dortmund 3-2 on aggregate, but the Spanish outfit could have easily gone out to the Germans for the second consecutive season. This is after Dortmund staged a remarkable comeback in the second leg to come within a post of becoming level on aggregate.

They had lost the first leg 3-0 and it was followed by intense criticism of the German outfit. Despite losing 3-0, Dortmund still created several opportunities and even taking one of them would have given a major boost ahead of the second leg. Despite this setback, Jurgen Klopp’s team totally dominated Madrid in the second leg at home. Two goals from Marco Reus gave them hope that they could eventually pull this tie level, but Madrid hung on for a win. After the match, Modric says that Madrid need to improve a lot in European performances to think about winning the title.

Madrid then managed to get themselves a tough semi-final against Bayern Munich.

“I don’t know what happened. It may be that we were complacent because we won 3-0 and we started thinking it would be easy. I don’t know. We need to learn from this match. We always say we need to learn, but we never do. Of course, we’re happy we’ve reached the semi-finals but we aren’t happy with how we’ve played, especially in the first half. We can’t allow what happened in the first half,” said the midfielder.

The former Tottenham man has scored just two goals in 44 appearances for the club this season.