Madrid, Nov 22 (IANS) Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos asked for “forgiveness” from fans after eternal rivals Barcelona handed them a humiliating 0-4 rout in the La Liga Clasico at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium here.
Suarez’s brace and goals from Neymar and Andres Iniesta downed Real 0-4, as Real’s home fans jeered and booed their own side on Saturday in a match billed as the world’s biggest game in club football.
This victory also helped the Catalan giants pull six points clear at the top of La Liga. They have 30 points as against 24 acquired by Real from 12 round of matches.
“There’s not much to say. Today we have to ask the Real Madrid fans for forgiveness for our poor performance. We didn’t play to the standards of this crest. These are things that can happen. Hopefully we can put this behind us,” Ramos told realmadrid.com.
“With this pain comes an opportunity to exact revenge in a few months time and play the kind of game we wanted to play today.”
The Real Madrid defense, marshalled by the captain himself failed to contain a Barcelona side that was without Argentine superstar Lionel Messi, as Brazilian Neymar and Uruguayan Suarez linked up brilliantly with playmaker Iniesta and Croatian international Ivan Rakitic.
Not only them, the Barceloan defenders — Javier Mascherano, Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba and Dani Alves didn’t give much opportunities for Real’s famed attacking trio of Gaeth Bale, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo.
“If football was like maths, then it would always work out as planned. There are things that can go badly, we misplaced a lot of passes and they knew how to capitalise on that,” Ramos admitted.
“They scored against us very early on and on top of that we weren’t able to convert our chances into goals. There were a lot of circumstances that led to the result and as a team we weren’t up to the standard,” the Spanish international added.
However, the 29-year-old backed head coach Rafa Benitez, whose position is under pressure not less than four months into the job. He had replaced Carlo Ancelotti.
“Obviously we are standing firmly by the manager. In order be successful you have to remain united, and that’s even more the case when things don’t go well. We have faith in our manager and in our teammates,” he said.
“We have to be united, dust ourselves off and be aware that there are six months remaining for us to fight for all three titles. It’s too soon to be talking about failure.”
Ramos said, however that they will continue to fight for the La Liga title.
“Obviously there’s still a long way to go in La Liga. We’ve let La Liga titles slip away with ten-point leads and we’ve won others after trailing by a lot of points,” the 2010 World Cup winner said.
“It’s too early to draw conclusions but today was a big opportunity to stake our claim by drawing with Barcelona and going top.”