Real Madrid coach Xabi Alonso appeared at a press conference after the 5-2 loss to Atletico Madrid in the seventh round of La Liga at the Metropolitano Stadium.

The coach said: "It was a bad match. We didn't enter the game well, we didn't perform collectively as we should, and we weren't at the required level either with or without the ball. We are in a building phase, and this is our first defeat. The journey continues, and we must learn lessons for the future. We feel the pain because the loss was deserved. We lacked speed and rhythm, and the defeat is painful."

He added: "It’s a painful blow but a positive one for the future. In individual duels and balls in spaces, we lost most of them, and with the ball, we didn’t find solutions. It was a bad match overall and a deserved loss. This is football, and defeats come at some point, and this was the first one, and we will definitely learn from it. The loss was deserved, and there are no comments on the refereeing. It is the first defeat and painful for everyone. We feel a great responsibility, and now we have to look ahead. We are at the beginning of the season, and this is not the level we want to present."

He emphasized: "We are not satisfied with the way we played today, but we do not want to forget where we started. We want to get back on the right track, and in the building phase, there are tough days. The most important thing is how we will react and our ability to develop. We have to extract the positive aspects despite the pain we feel today."

Regarding starting Bellingham: "We need all the players, and he was training well. We were neither quick nor organized with the ball, we lost a lot of individual duels, and we also failed to press high and regain the ball in the opponent's areas. We will analyze the decisions and learn from them. We will not forget this harsh loss. We are in a building phase, and today we did not present the level we wanted. We have to be honest with ourselves, analyze what happened, extract lessons, and try to improve."

He noted: "What concerns me the most is the reason for the lack of the required intensity. We did not compete enough, and we were not at the level of these matches or this type of opponents. We need to raise our level; that is what we must do. We lacked a higher level in everything."

He continued: "We talked at halftime in the locker room about entering the second half as if it were a new match, but we did not succeed in that. There were circumstances: the penalty, the free kick, losing the ball... We were not at our level, and we were punished accordingly."

He concluded about the behavior of ball collectors at the Metropolitano Stadium: "We will not make this repeated detail an excuse for the defeat. We simply were not at our level, and we need to use this pain positively, whether on an individual or collective level."