Pepe rued Real Madrid’s ‘bad 20 minutes’ as their Champions League quarter-final first leg at Wolfsburg ended in a 2-0 defeat.
Madrid went down to a Ricardo Rodriguez penalty and a second from Maxi Arnold, both before half time, with Pepe lamenting what he saw as a sloppy spell.
“It’s sad to lose a game like this but know we have to think about the comeback,” he said, AS reports.
“There’s one game left to turn around the qualifier.
“We had a bad 20 minutes that they took advantage of. We had chances, we didn’t take them and we have to congratulate the opponent.
“We didn’t start well in the first few minutes and you pay for that in the Champions League.
“We knew they were a team who would go out to counter-attack a lot and after the penalty we had to regroup, because we didn’t want to concede more goals. At the same time, all we needed to do was score a goal.
“We’ll have our fans in the return leg, giving everything. There were 20 minutes in which our performance dropped and that time coincided with their two goals and that is costly.
“We’re a team, we give everything and we lose together. We need our fans to be in the game with us. We believe and we’re going to give the maximum to win.”
