Real Madrid made a light load of Chelsea in the first leg of the Champions League finals at the Santiago Bernabeu. The Spanish Giant defeated Frank Lampard’s side 2-0 thanks to first half and second-half goals from Karim Benzema and Marcos Asensio.
One Chelsea player who struggled on the night was Chelsea right-back, Reece James. The England international was a pale shadow of himself during the game and failed to stop Real Madrid’s most dangerous man on the pitch Vinicius Jr.
Manchester United Icon Rio Ferdinand believes Reece James will not be happy with his performance against Real Madrid and tips the 23-year-old to bounce back in the second leg at Stamford Bridge next week.
What did Rio Ferdinand say?
The Premier League legend said on BT Sport: “The important thing is he has to take that personally. As a defender there’s pride and you know everyone is watching.
“There’s millions watching, let alone in this stadium. You go home and you analyze your performance. You get in there with the analysts and say give me my clips I want to see exactly what happened, where did I see the points where I got it wrong today?
“What was my approach? Did I soften my knees on my approach, was I going in too upright, was I going in too quick and not putting the breaks on?
“Go through it with a fine tooth comb. Then it’s about me vs you next week, gaffer make sure I’m one vs one with him and I’m going to prove to the world I can deal with people at this level because that’s what it’s about.”
Meanwhile, Frank Lampard has revealed that he opted for a back five to neutralize the threat of Vinicius Jr.
He said: “Partly the reason. I think I had different things to consider.
“Vinicius one-against-one is a big problem for any team so we wanted to created two-against-ones on that side of the pitch. It didn’t help getting the yellow card for Fofana so early, it makes you nervous. He’s a player that is very good.
”With a back five, you want to not be a back five as much as you can and we tried to enforce that. When we have the ball we want to be a three, we want to use the width of the pitch. As I mentioned, we could have done that a bit better, it was a weapon for us to use today.
“Get the ball out of pressure, get it to the side. In terms of the system, the thinking was very clear to negate threats but to give us an in possession control of the game which we could have done more.”
