Nothing is won, every match is a final – Zidane

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Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane said on Tuesday ahead of the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid that every match needs to be played as if it were a final and nothing had been won yet.

Los Blancos will be defending a three-goal advantage when they face-off Atletico at the Vicente Calderon on Wednesday.

And Zidane called for caution.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem with the attitude. The important thing is we know the risks of the qualifying round,” he said.

Nothing is won and we have to play the match, our performance must be excellent to get to the next round. We need to be calm and think that we are playing a soccer match, we are not playing anything else. We talk a lot about this match, about different problems, but in the end it will be a soccer match and that’s it.”

At the pre-match news conference Captain Sergio Ramos also responded to Atletico fans who have launched a social media campaign questioning Real Madrid’s values and saying the club only had titles and money.

“They make it seem as if we were all raised in Beverly Hills and we had a huge bank account, so this doesn’t bother me. There’s a lot of people here from humble origins, with values and who are very educated,” Ramos said.

Real thrashed Granada 4-0 on Saturday despite Zidane making nine changes from the team that beat Atletico so convincingly, while Diego Simeone only rested one player in his side’s 1-0 victory over Eibar.

Welsh forward Gareth Bale and right back Daniel Carvajal didn’t train with the group on Tuesday.