Thomas Tuchel insists Chelsea deserved to go through against Real Madrid in their Champions League quarter-final.
The Blues were behind 3-1 on aggregate heading into the second leg in Madrid on Tuesday night.
Tuchel's side almost pulled off a remarkable comeback by going ahead 3-0 on the night, only for Rodrygo and Karim Benzema to put Real through to the semi-finals.
Chelsea also had Marcos Alonso's goal chalked off for a handball, with the referee relying on his VAR assistant to make the decision rather than consulting the pitch-side monitor, which Tuchel felt was wrong.
The German told BT Sport after the game: "These are the kind of defeats we can digest and swallow, because we left nothing to regret out there.
"We played what we wanted to play and showed the quality and character the team has. We deserved to go through, but it was not meant to be, we were simply unlucky. The full credit is for the players.
"I'm very disappointed for the referee that he did not check [the disallowed Alonso goal] ... but that's what you get when you play Real Madrid in the Champions League.
"We had a huge deficit to overcome. Unfortunately both of their goals today came from mistakes in the build-up. They took advantage of the mistakes with individual quality and over the two legs, we did too many of these big mistakes."
