Carlo Ancelotti admits he used Sunday League tactic against Chelsea

Carlo Ancelotti revealed his side practiced a tactic to beat Chelsea in the Champions League that is more associated with Sunday League than the top tier of European football.

It wasn't exactly the toughest tie in their favourite competition that Real Madrid have ever had to face, as they came up against Chelsea in the quarter-finals.

For their fourth knockout round in-a-row they defeated English competition, helped by Wesley Fofana being too busy reading a note to defend in the first leg.

Things didn't go much better for Frank Lampard's team in the second game either, and even before kick off it didn't look good, with the club forgetting to play the competition's anthem.

Some shocking defending meant that the west Londoners lost the second game, at Stamford Bridge, by the same 2-0 scoreline that they grabbed the first.

It wasn't even a vintage performance from the Spanish giants, who are attempting to increase their total of European titles to 15 this season.

They didn't have to get much further than second gear, and were pretty sloppy at times, but were always an arms length clear from Lampard's men.

And Ancelotti has now admitted that they practiced Fede Valverde shooting straight from kick off, the kind of thing you'd normally expect to see on your local pitch on a Sunday.

"We have seen in recent games that Kepa at the beginning of the game was on the penalty spot," the former Blues boss told MARCA about the tactic.

"We thought that with a long shot from Valverde, we could score.

"We tried to work a lot on set pieces, less defensively because we defend in the zone."

Valverde was sat in the pocket ready to shoot. Image: The Sun

In the end, Valverde didn't actually attempt the long distance effort, presumably deciding that Kepa wasn't far enough of his line to shoot.

But it didn't matter at all, with Los Blancos progressing to the semi-finals, where they will meet Manchester City, for the second year in-a-row at that stage.

Whichever club gets to the final will be favourites, with the Milan derby on the other side of the draw, but fans won't be happy with how much they have to pay.

Once again, supporters have been short-changed with only 20,000 tickets for each club, and they'll have to pay upwards of €690 for the privilege of seeing their team.

Topics: Football, Real Madrid, Chelsea, La Liga, Champions League, Premier League, Carlo Ancelotti

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a journalist for SPORTbible with over eight years of experience. Passionate about all sports, he mainly covers football and F1 - Daniel Ricciardo once spent an entire interview referring to him as 'Ryan Gosling,' still his proudest moment.

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