Ancelotti fuming with Real Madrid after draw against Mallorca on Mbappé LaLiga debut

Real Madrid head coach Carlo Ancelotti is usually a calm, good-natured man, especially if he is happy with his team’s results and performance. That, however, was not the case after the Champions League holders were held to a 1-1 draw by Mallorca on Kylian Mbappé's LaLiga debut.

Clips of the Italian singing along to terrace favourites, smoking cigars while rocking his sunglasses and dancing with his players at trophy celebrations were a distant memory after Sunday’s game in Palma, with the 65-year-old furious with how his team had led two points slip in their opening league fixture.

Mallorca stand up to Real Madrid superstars

And with good reason, too. Mallorca had more efforts on goal than their considerably more illustrious opponents (12 to 10), the same number of which (five) were on target. Ancelotti was especially displeased with his team’s defensive passiveness in the second half, in which they failed to intercept a single pass.

Mallorca, with a fraction of their opponents’ budget, weren’t content to sit back and defend after equalising eight minutes after halftime and were allowed to piece together attacks without much resistance, much to the Madrid manager’s dismay.

What did Ancelotti say after Real Madrid’s draw at Mallorca?

“We started well, but in the second half we lacked balance. It was a game we could have lost. If you don’t have the right balance defensively, you are susceptible to counterattacks, to crosses… We didn’t play a good game, although it was actually a fairly clear what happened. We have to defend better, have better balance on the field. We are a very attacking team, but defensive balance is crucial,” began Ancelotti.

But it wasn’t just his team’s setup the Italian was unhappy with. He publicly took aim at his players’ attitude on several occasions, which he has rarely done so in the past.

“I don’t want to make excuses. We just had to do better, show a better attitude. When you talk about the defending, it’s mostly about attitude, about commitment. We struggled to win the ball back, we struggled to apply pressure after losing the ball. All of that needs to be improved. The team was too open, we had to be tighter, more together. It’s not a physical or mental problem. It’s just a problem of thinking about it,” explained Ancelotti.

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With Mbappé's arrival and Kroos’ departure, some feared it might happen. Real Madrid have changed from a formation with four natural central midfielders to having just two, one of whom, Fede Valverde, has largely played a more attacking role in recent seasons.

Ahead of the Uruguayan and Aurélien Tchouaméni is Jude Bellingham, whose first thought is to get into the box, with Rodrygo, Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior playing as a front three.

The 4-3-3 on paper (more of a 4-2-1-3 in reality) should become a 4-4-2 in defensive phases of play, with Bellingham and Rodrygo tasked with dropping into the wide midfield positions. So far, though, with players still building up their match fitness, it has been more of a 4-2-4, leaving the defence overexposed. Mallorca were able to take advantage all too easily.

Despite his criticism, Ancelotti opted not to put the blame on any one part of the team, with his anger directed at his players’ collective efforts: “You can think that it’s the forwards’ fault, but it could also be the defence’s fault, the midfielders’ fault, who don’t help the forwards when they press.. It’s not a problem related to just one, two or three players. It’s a team problem. In this game, we didn’t understand that it was an important part of the game and Mallorca did, much better than us. They played a very good defensive game. A draw is a fair result.”

Real Madrid to learn lesson from Mallorca draw

Nevertheless, Ancelotti ended on a positive note, emphasising that an important lesson had been learned, as was the case after last September’s defeat to Atlético Madrid, their only LaLiga loss in 2023/24.

After losing the derby, the Italian spoke of how Los Merengues could improve defensively, especially when defending diagonal balls into the box. Madrid were beaten only once more all season, also by Atleti in the Copa del Rey.

This time around, commitment and desire appear to be more important than tactics. But Ancelotti is sure his players won’t repeat the same mistake twice: “The players think the same thing. We have to recover our positions and get back, we have to think about doing it together. We can learn a lot from this game. It is clear where the problem is.”