Jose Mourinho sees improvement as Real Madrid looks to catch Barcelona

Posted Sunday, August 28, 2011 by YAHOO Sport

Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho claims his side is playing better soccer than last season and says he is looking forward to Sunday's La Liga opener against Zaragoza at La Romareda.

The Portuguese coach saw his team win all seven of its pre-season friendlies, only to lose narrowly to fierce rival Barcelona in the two-legged Spanish Supercopa 5-4 on aggregate following epic encounters at the Santiago Bernabeu and Camp Nou.

"In the Spanish championship you can't afford to drop points," Mourinho said.

Madrid, second to Barca in each of the last three campaigns, will now look to go one better this season and Mourinho knows his side cannot afford to slip up against Zaragoza as it did at home late last term with a surprising 3-2 loss to Javier Aguirre's relegation-threatened outfit.

"On the first day of the season there can be surprises and I have warned my players that," Mourinho said. They need to change the chip following this period when they didn't know whether they would be playing or not."

Due to the players' strike, the first round of matches were postponed last weekend. With an agreement reached for this weekend's games to go ahead, Mourinho hopes his side can pick up where it left off in the preseason.

"I prefer to look at the positives from preseason [rather than at the Spanish Supercopa defeat to Barcelona] and I have been very pleased with my team - we are playing better than we did last season," he said.

Real Madrid faces Zaragoza at 2 p.m. ET on Sunday while Barcelona is not in action until Monday when it takes on Villarreal.