Jude Bellingham: Real Madrid ‘lucky’ not to concede more goals to Arsenal in 3-0 defeat | OneFootball

Jude Bellingham admits Real Madrid were lucky to only lose 3-0 at the Emirates Stadium after his side were thrashed by Arsenal in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final.

Declan Rice scored twice from free-kicks before Mikel Merino added a third to give Arsenal a huge advantage for the second leg at the Santiago Bernabeu.

And while Bellingham is adamant that the tie is not done, he says their opponents could have scored way more than the three they did.

“We were nowhere near it,” he told Amazon Prime.

“And Arsenal were really good. I know two of their goals were free-kicks and individual pieces of delivery but they could have had way more. We were lucky to get away with three.

“But there is a second leg. That’s the thing that we’re kind of holding on to and we’re going to need something unbelievably special, something crazy really but if there’s one place where crazy things can happen it’s at our house.

“Obviously the performance was nowhere near good enough but I can’t come out after a game and say we’re going to give up. That’s not in the nature of the club or the nature of the mentality they instill in you at this club so there’s 90 more minutes at home to pull something out the bag.”

Rice’s free-kick double marked the first time in his professional career he has scored from a direct free-kick and the England midfielder admitted afterwards that it had left him feeling “speechless”.

And Bellingham praised his international team-mate for making the difference while reiterating that his own team did nowhere near enough to win.

“They are two great pieces of individual quality,” he said.

“If it wasn’t for those two goals they still had a lot more chances where we did very little but sometimes that’s the difference in these type of games. I thought we were hanging on well despite not playing very well at all and then we got punished.

“In these games you need to create more because everyone’s at their best level. Very rarely do you come to a place like this, have one chance, score it and go through or take a lead back home.

“We didn’t do enough.”