After very nearly seeing his side blow a three-goal first-leg lead at Signal Iduna Park, the Croatian admitted that Los Blancos are consistently guilty of complacency
Luka Modric has hit out at Real Madrid's turgid display as they fell to defeat at Borussia Dortmund, claiming that they "never learn" from poor performances.
The Blancos, who left Cristiano Ronaldo on the bench due to fitness fears, were beaten 2-0 by an injury-depleted Schwarzgelben side at Signal Iduna Park - but the Spanish giants still progressed to the final four of the Champions League 3-2 on aggregate.
Despite booking their spot in the next round, Modric was at a loss to explain the team's poor performance and says qualification is bittersweet because of the nature of of their defeat in Dortmund.
"I don't know what happened," the Croatian midfielder told reporters. "It may be that we were complacent because we won 3-0 and we started thinking it would be easy. I don't know.
"We need to learn from this match. We always say we need to learn but we never do.
"Of course we're happy we've reached the semi-finals but we aren't happy with how we've played, especially in the first-half," he said. We can't allow what happened in the first-half. But we improved and we are in the semi-final."
Madrid will now appear in their fourth consecutive Champions semi-final, but they have lost all three of their previous last-four ties.
The attacker, who scored both of BVB's goals in a stirring 2-0 win at Signal Iduna Park, found his side's aggregate loss "difficult to swallow"
Marco Reus was devastated that lady luck deserted Borussia Dortmund during their courageous showing against Real Madrid on Tuesday.

Although Jurgen Klopp's men won 2-0 at Signal Iduna Park, a 3-0 defeat in the first leg at the Santiago Bernabeu ensured that their comeback was not good enough to earn them a spot in the Champions League semi-finals.

Reus, who scored both goals, was left to rue a disappointing performance in Madrid but felt the Schwarzgelben had created more than enough chances to have seen off Carlo Ancelotti's side.

"We didn't play well in the first leg and that's why we were chasing the tie," the Germany international told reporters.

"We did everything we could right from the start and played with real courage going forward.

"Unfortunately we just lacked that little bit of luck, but we came mighty close to surprising everyone.

"We could easily have scored the goals to take us through, both tonight [Tuesday] and last week. That makes it all the more difficult to swallow that we're out.

"After reaching the final last season we definitely wanted to get further than the quarters."

The result saw the Blancos get revenge for last year's semi-final loss to Dortmund, who subsequently lost to Bayern Munich in the tournament decider at Wembley.