Ancelotti rallies Madrid as limp defeats rattle fans

Milan loss serves as a sharp wake-up call for listless team, with Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappé struggling

- Sid Lowe

The reality is what was seen on the pitch," Carlo Ancelotti said, and what was seen on the pitch wasn't good. In fact, it was awful. So bad that fans of the club who have made miracles their thing left early, whistling as they went. The only surprise was that they didn't whip out the white hankies. Real Madrid were 3-1 down to Milan, who had won once away from San Siro all season, and defeat was as inevitable as it was deserved. Repeated too: in 11 days here Ancelotti's team had lost as many times as in the whole of last season anywhere.

First Barcelona came to the Santiago Bernabéu and scored four, now Milan had got three. Madrid hadn't conceded so many back-to-back at home for 15 years - and the shock was that it had happened so recently. Nor was it just that they had been beaten, it was how they had been beaten: there was an indolence that irritated supporters, a weakness, disorientation and individualism that made Milan's job almost shockingly easy. Madrid hadn't shown up, a bit like for the Ballon d'Or. You might be tempted to call it a system failure, only there was no sign of a system, and after the luxury of 10 days to prepare.

"There's no excuse," Andriy Lunin said. At the beginning of his post-match interview, about as much as the Ukrainian keeper could manage was to sigh: "Pffff..." And even the greeting stuck in his throat. "I can't say 'good evening'," he said. But for him, it would have been more than three, which was bad enough.

"We have to be worried," Ancelotti admitted. "We're lacking something." Something? Right now, Madrid were - are - lacking almost everything. Thibaut Courtois and Dani Carvajal, for a start. But although injured absentees are important, although the line between success and failure is often fine and Madrid have a happy habit of falling on the right side of it, they do not explain this, still less justify it.