Rudiger says teammates deserve to be proud despite defeat to Real Madrid

Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger said the Blues can be proud of the way they performed at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, which almost saw them pull off one of the biggest turnaround in history against Real Madrid.

He, however, acknowledge that Chelsea have to accept that they can’t afford the kind of mistakes they made at that level.

‘The positive is we didn’t give up,’ said the defender.

‘Not many teams can come here and dominate them as we did. But the big “but” is, over the two legs we made these type of mistakes. Against Real Madrid you get punished.

‘We were close. I think we dominated them and we outplayed them, we outran them, but at the end of the day it’s little details that we missed.

‘We scored three goals, I think not many can come here and do that. For me we outplayed them, we outran them and we did a fantastic match, but if you look at both games we need to win these.’