Bayern philosophical after Madrid drubbing

A 4-0 second-leg defeat may have put paid to FC Bayern München's hopes of defending their UEFA Champions League crown but Arjen Robben was determined to draw the positives from a nonetheless successful campaign for the Bundesliga champions.

The Dutchman felt that the scoreline was irrelevant in light of Bayern's elimination and conceded that Real Madrid CF "were better than us", while Toni Kroos and Philipp Lahm pointed to the hosts' failure to defend set-pieces as the root of Bayern's downfall.

Arjen Robben, Bayern midfielder
It's not about the margin of defeat. We're hugely disappointed and it's really hit us hard. We won't be going to Lisbon and that's all that matters. We need to learn from this for next season.

It's easy to be negative about everything but we should try to be positive too. We're Bundesliga champions, having broken umpteen records, we're in the DFB Cup final and we reached the semi-finals of the Champions League for the fourth time in five years.

We've been in the final in three of the last five seasons. It didn't work out today because the other team were better than us. We wanted to attack and we were punished.

Toni Kroos, Bayern midfielder
At 1-0 down we thought that three goals might be possible. At 2-0, we knew it was going to be very, very tough. Perhaps we needed a bit more possession. Real were able to counterattack a few too many times.

Our system wasn't the problem – we didn't defend two set-pieces properly and that left us chasing the game. The game opened up then because we were running all over the place and couldn't defend sufficiently.

It's normal to have phases where you're not quite up to scratch or the players aren't at 100%. It was always going to be difficult against Real if we didn't perform to our best over the two legs.

Philipp Lahm, Bayern defender
It's just disappointing. We expected a lot from this game but going two behind from set-pieces against a team like Madrid makes things very difficult. We didn't play as well as we did in the first leg.

Our formation was different and we weren't as good tactically. We controlled the game in Madrid and didn't give them many chances. It wasn't an open game like tonight, where it was back and forth throughout.

Real are an outstanding team, as we saw in the first half. To lose to them in the semi-finals isn't the end of the world. They've done what we did last season [against FC Barcelona in the semi-finals]. Unfortunately, we just never hit our stride.