Carlo Ancelotti spoke to the media in the press room of the La Cartuja stadium and discussed the Copa del Rey final: “It was a good game and we competed well. The first half was tougher, but we were better in the second half. We had the game under control, but they played a ball behind our defence for the second goal and the game got more complicated. The team was good, we were close to winning, but we have to keep fighting. I have nothing to fault the team for. If we'd won, it wouldn't have been a scandal because we were better than our opponents in the second half.”

“We defended well without trying to get out of the pressure at the beginning. It wasn't easy because when they have energy they press very well. When they dropped the pace of the pressing we controlled the ball better and in the second half we played very well.”

No criticism of the team
“I'm hurt because we weren't able to lift the Cup; there's nothing to criticise because we gave it everything we had.”

Bringing on Mbappé after half-time
“I chose to bring on Mbappé in the second half when the tempo dropped a bit. He came on and did very well, scored the equaliser and had a lot of chances. He couldn't last 90 minutes and I preferred to put him on in the second half because of that.”

The move that led to Barcelona’s third goal
“Brahim thought Luka could play the ball to him one way and he played it low instead. These are details that sometimes count for nothing and other times count for a lot.”

On his future
“I can go on or I can stop. It will be an ongoing issue in the coming weeks.”

Refereeing in the final
“I don’t want to talk about the referee.”

Rüdiger
“He had a fantastic game and held on as long as he could. I appreciated his effort and it was fantastic. He wasn't injured, he was just tired and couldn't run any more.”

Red cards
“I don't know what happened with the third red card. We have to see what happened and I don't know. Now we have to wait. We're going to rest for two days to prepare for the games against Celta and Barcelona at the end of LaLiga.”