What Thomas Tuchel needed to calm his anger after Chelsea's Champions League loss to Real Madrid

Thomas Tuchel struggled to contain his anger and exasperation in the immediate aftermath of Chelsea's defeat to Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final first leg. His spiky post-match television interviews and irritable press conference were very much proof of that.

The Chelsea head coach did not enjoy his side's performance. There were too many false dawns across the 90 minutes and too many mistakes, both individually and collectively. Yet in the heat of battle, Tuchel felt there was little he could do to dramatically alter things.

"In the first minute, I saw spaces that we didn't exploit," the 48-year-old reflected this afternoon. "We didn't attack the space which was open and where we wanted to play. Then we did it. Then we stopped. Then we did it again, and I thought, 'Ah, maybe we need to groove into the match because we are nervous', but we waited another five minutes, another 10 minutes. It was a bit up and down. Never fully confident, a bit of a strange feeling.

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"We had easy ball losses but suddenly had a big counterattack with Kai [Havertz], and a big chance came out of it. Then we had a good moment in possession but gave the ball easily away, and they had a shot off the crossbar. So it was never stable, it was never like, 'Ah, we are there now, and we are doing what we want to do'.

"After the second goal, I still had the feeling we need a goal to get the confidence back, the crowd back, the momentum back. Once we had the goal, we gave this huge chance away for 3-1 right before half-time [which Karim Benzema missed].

"On the sideline, I never had the grip on it where I could say, 'Now we