Five-goal Madrid forced to battle to beat Mallorca

18 Mar, 2013

Real Madrid assistant manager Aitor Karanka said they must stop conceding poor goals from set-pieces as the Spanish champions twice had to come from a goal down to beat Mallorca 5-2 at the Bernabeu on Saturday.
The visitors went into half-time 2-1 ahead as Emilio Nsue and Alejandro Alfaro scored from free headers either side of Gonzalo Higuain's reply for Madrid, and Mallorca could easily have gone 3-1 up when Alan Hutton headed just wide.
"Set-pieces have caused us problems since the start of the season," Karanka told a press conference.
"It is due to a lack of concentration and communication and obviously it is something we have to keep improving on for the final part of the season."
Luckily for Los Blancos the introduction of Mesut Ozil and Karim Benzema at half-time turned the game around as three goals in six minutes from Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric and Higuain gave them a comfortable lead before Benzema rounded off the scoring in stoppage time. "In the first-half we were making a lot of errors, not only in the goals but in giving the ball away and committing stupid fouls," said Karanka.

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