The misery for Real Madrid this season continued as they succumbed to their worst ever home defeat in Europe when they were defeated 0-3 by CSKA Moscow in the Champions League on Thursday.
Santiago Solari named a weakened side for the match as they had already topped the Group and paid the price for it. Real Madrid had begun well with Marco Asensio forcing three saves from goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev.
The Russian stopper also denied Brazilian teenager Vinicius Jr but it was against the run of play that Moscow took the lead when Fedor Chalov came up with a curling shot that went past Thibaut Courtois in the 37th minute.
Georgy Schennikov doubled the lead six minutes later much to the agony of the home crowd as Real Madrid trailed 0-2 at half-time.
Arnor Sigurdsson scored his team’s third goal with 17 minutes from time from the edge of the box as CSKA completed the rout.
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Despite Solari introducing Bale at the half-time, the game wasn’t much impacted and to add to the home side’s woes, the winger even sustained an ankle injury. But nonetheless, he received treatment and was able to continue throughout the game.
CSKA Moscow, with this win, became the only side to defeat Real Madrid twice in the group stage of the Champions League since Juventus did it in 2008-2009.
Solari now has eight wins out of 10 matches for Real Madrid and interestingly, the other two have been defeats–both by the same scoreline against Eibar in the La Liga and against CSKA Moscow in the Champions League. It wasn’t a surprise that they were booed by the crowd at the Bernabeu after they failed to register more than one shot on target in the second half.
It was indeed a day of shocking losses as Italian club AS Roma also was left stunned 1-2 by Viktoria Plzen on their trip to the Czech Republic.
The lead was taken by Jan Kovarik but Roma’s Cengiz Under levelled the scores shortly. But Plzen struck again when Tomas Chory scored the winner. The match ended on a sour note with Roma’s Luca Pellegrini sent off for receiving a second yellow card.