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Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has responded at length to a number of narratives in the press, following their excellent victory over Manchester City<\/a> on Wednesday night. The Belgian shot-stopper was keen to dispel the notion that his teammates were indisciplined and held more power than the manager.<\/p>\n Courtois enjoyed another fine night against City<\/a>, making a crucial save from Nico O\u2019Reilly, but also providing an assist to Fede Valverde for the opening goal.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know I have a great long-range shot. Obviously, I\u2019m not Ter Stegen, but I have a good long-range shot; we\u2019ve worked on it, especially against teams that leave a lot of space at the back. And this, with a good ball like the ones in the Champions League, makes those passes come out,\u201d he told Cadena SER<\/a> after the game.<\/p>\n \n \n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Courtois was also keen to to respond to a number of narratives in the press<\/a>, claiming that much the speculation around the club in recent months is just that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t read what you say (laughs). I\u2019m at home and I analyse what I need to analyse with Llopis [Luis Llopis, goalkeeping coach]. Some things gets through, we\u2019re not on Mars, but we\u2019re not always looking at what you say. You say things you think are true, when they\u2019re not. Obviously, nobody\u2019s going to come out and say otherwise, but I\u2019ve read things that\u2026 oh my god (laughs)! It\u2019s your job and I respect that,\u201d he commented later to Diario AS<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Real Madrid dressing room has been painted as a group of stars that need to be treated as such by their manager, whomever it is, for fear of rebellion. Courtois claimed that he and his colleagues follow the manager\u2019s instructions to the letter.<\/p>\n \u201cYou think this is a nursery and that we do whatever we want. That\u2019s not the case. We respect the coaches, the technical staff, everyone. Many criticisms are unfair. Others are valid, and that\u2019s fine. Sometimes we play poorly: against Celta, Getafe\u2026 We\u2019re partly to blame, and I accept that. But today was a step forward as a team, and we have to remember that. If we fight for each other, things will work out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI feel that in my first year we were much worse off than now, and there wasn\u2019t this toxic atmosphere. There needs to be more respect for the dressing room. Saying things like we have more power than the manager or that we didn\u2019t want to play in Albacete is unacceptable. We\u2019re professionals and we always do what the manager tells us. That doesn\u2019t exist here; this is Real Madrid.\u201d<\/p>\n After Alvaro Arbeloa\u2019s arrival saw similar results early on, the fingers of blame swivelled towards the players at Real Madrid. Yet there was a consistent string of stories that they did not get on with predecessor Alonso, feeling his approach involved too much video analysis<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case. Nobody set Xabi up. To say we don\u2019t like the tactics, that we don\u2019t like the videos\u2026 I had Antonio Conte, and you\u2019d spend an hour there (watching videos). And I didn\u2019t care, because we\u2019re professionals. It\u2019s my job. It\u2019s one thing to play with your friends. There, it\u2019s normal not to want to watch a half-hour video. But if I have to watch a video, I watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe prepare for matches. I spoke with the NFL in the summer, and they\u2019re watching videos all the time. Our professionalism has been questioned. The first few months with Xabi went very well. And we had a rough patch, we couldn\u2019t find our rhythm, but we\u2019re not in charge, the manager is, and we have to respect that.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a tricky season at the Bernabeu, with two managerial changes in the space of seven months. Trailing Barcelona by four points in La Liga, their victory over City was one of the few times that Los Blancos have put in a cohesive performance in recent months, and with Arbeloa the third manager to try to get the best out of the current squad with mixed results, changing the coach no longer looks like a definitive solution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The post Thibaut Courtois rages at press pack – ‘Real Madrid is not a nursery, nobody set Xabi Alonso up’<\/a> appeared first on Football Espa\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has responded at length to a number of narratives in the press, following their excellent victory over Manchester…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5574,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions\/5574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018You think this is a nursery, but we\u2019re professionals\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Nobody set Xabi Alonso up\u2019 \u2013 Courtois<\/h2>\n