Thomas Tuchel takes aim at referee for ‘laughing and smiling’ with Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti, while Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger laments ‘mistakes’

Thomas Tuchel was far from impressed with the referee's behaviour after Chelsea's Champions League exit.

In an incredible quarter-final contest at the Bernabeu, the Premier League side needed to win 3-0 to qualify, but fell short at the closing stages..

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Even though it was a tall order, goals from Mason Mount, Antonio Rudiger and Timo Werner gave the Blues the three goals needed.

But sadly, their efforts were in vain as they lost the tie 5-4 on aggregate after extra-time when Rodrygo made it 3-1 in 90 minutes.

Karim Benzema then scored the winner.

Having been 3-0 up, with ten minutes to go, the Blues will think they should have seen the game out.

Speaking after the match, Tuchel didn't like what he saw from the official.

“Disappointed that the referee had a good time with my colleague, Carlo Ancelotti,” he said.

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“I know that Carlo is a gentleman and a nice guy, but when I wanted to go and say thank you for the match, I saw him laughing and smiling and laughing loudly with the opponent’s coach.

“I think this is a very wrong time to do this after the final whistle and 126 minutes, and one team giving their heart and fighting to the very last drop, and you go as a coach and see the referee smiling and laughing with the other coach.

“I think it's very very bad timing, and I told him this.”     

As for the game itself, Tuchel said how proud he was of his players, but also lamented the errors made.

“We are very disappointed, and we are very proud at the same time,” he added.

“We played a fantastic match, we scored four goals [one of them from Marcos Alonso which was disallowed], we had big chances to score even more, but we were unlucky, that’s why we are disappointed.

“We got beaten by pure individual quality and conversion, offensive conversion of our mistakes, unfortunately we had two mistakes after ball wins, the most crucial moment in games against Real Madrid.

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“In the end we were unlucky, we deserved to go through after this performance and after this match today, but it wasn’t meant to be.

“These are the kind of defeats we can digest and swallow because we left nothing to regret out there.

“We left everything, we played what we wanted to play, we showed the quality and the character that this team has.

“We deserved to go through, but it wasn’t meant to be today, we were simply unlucky.

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“Full credit for the players, it's not easy to come here, you need to score, you need to win, and to do it over the 90 minutes, simply unlucky not to go through, we deserved it.

“I didn’t see the goal that was disallowed, but I’m very very disappointed that the referee that he does not check it by himself, absolutely disappointed. 

“Like I said, there’s nothing to regret, we had a huge deficit to overcome because we made big mistakes in the first leg.

“And unfortunately today also, both goals came from big mistakes from us in the build-up. 

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“They took advantage of the mistakes with individual qualities, and it was enough because over the two legs we did too many of these big mistakes.”

Centre-back Rudiger echoed his manager's words, highlighting the errors but saying how proud he was of his teammates.

“The positive is that we didn’t give up, not many teams can dominate them as we did,”

“But, the big but, is that over the two legs as we do, you get punished.

“That was the game plan, to find our number 10s, with Ruben and Mason, between Casemiro, to find the space, we found it and we got the goal, and we controlled the game, we didn’t panic. 

“In the second half, we scored goals, and did everything we could, but as I said over the two-legs, if you make these kind of mistakes, you get punished.

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“It was a do-or-die for us, I think everyone before the game we would win 3-0, but then the individual class came to light with Modric and Benzema, now we are here.”