“Courtois is in a bad way and could not continue for the second half,” Zidane clarified. “He is the Real Madrid goalkeeper alongside Areola.

Real Madrid conceded two poor goals vs Club Brugge (AP)

“Everyone can have an opinion; I am not going to get involved. We all need to be ready, like he was in the past three matches. I am not worried at all. He wants to do well.

“We can blame Thibaut, but here we are all in this together and I am the main culprit. For this, I am happy with the second half reaction. At half-time, I said if we carried on like that, we would lose the match and we had 45 minutes to change the result. We produced a bad first half but, in the second, we had a better attitude, went in search of the victory and changed the match. We had more heart and courage.”