After being eliminated from the Champions League by Lyon in what was Real Madrid's sixth consecutive exit in the first round of the knockout stage, coach Manuel Pellegrini declared that he had failed but that he was not going to resign as coach.
In comments reported by Marca, Pellegrini declared that the project he hopes to head in the Spanish capital is "greater than six months". The Chilean also responded with a definitive reply with respect to the future of his job.
"I am not going to resign. It is a difficult loss to take, but I will not leave. One will have to ask the directors about that [his future at the club]."
"We would like to have won everything this year, but now we find ourselves out of two competitions, even though we are leaders in La Liga. The first person responsible for an elimination is the coach, but we need to turn the page and win La Liga like [Fabio] Capello and [Bernd] Schuster did. It was everyone's hope that we would be in the final, and the elimination is that much more painful for that reason."
Avoiding an analysis of the defeat, Pellegrini denied that the cause was a lack of ability in the Spanish game.
"There will be a time for a lot of analysis, but the reality is that we have been eliminated after a first half in which we could have finished off the match. There will be a lot of discussion about what happened in the second half."
'El Ingeniero' also did not want to analyse the squad, but acknowledged that Guti was "not at his best for the entirety of the match" and that "little by little we tried to score as individuals, not as a collective unit as we did in the first half when we enjoyed a number of chances and could have scored a number of goals."
Finally, Pellegrini commented on Guti's earlier statements when the midfielder blamed the second half impotence on too much individualism on the part of the players.
"I believe we played a very good match in the first half in every aspect. In the second half we did act more as individuals. Between the pressure and the lack of continuity in our passing, we erroneously looked for another route."