Football: Soccer-Ancelotti frustrated with Real defending in draw at Mallorca

(Reuters) – Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti was critical of his team’s lack of balance and bad defending in a 1-1 draw at Mallorca in their LaLiga season opener on Sunday.

Ancelotti said his players lacked focus after taking an early lead through Rodrygo in the 13th minute but allowing Mallorca to rescue a point with a Vedat Muriqi header after the break.

“Today I am not happy. I think we could have been done much better,” a visibly frustrated Ancelotti told a press conference.

“We need to be more concentrated, work better as a group… It’s not a fitness problem, it was mental.

“I don’t want to make excuses for anything. We had to do better and show more attitude. We can learn a lot from this match, it’s a match where you can see clearly where we can end up having problems.”

Ancelotti was specially critical of his team’s defending, saying that he needs a more disciplined performance due to a system that plays with four attacking players like Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Jr, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham up front.

He suggested that Real could have easily lost due to their own blunders and urged his players to learn fast from Saturday’s mistakes.

“We started the game well, we took the lead and we had chances to score the second, but in the second half we lacked balance,” Ancelotti said.

“It was a game we could have lost because we didn’t have balance. It wasn’t a good game. We are a very attacking team and defensive balance is a fundamental part of the way we are built.

“We struggled to steal the ball, to press after losing the ball. When we talk about defending, we are talking above all about collective commitment. The balance is found with the players thinking about the same thing. When we have to win the ball back we have to think about it all together.

“It’s a problem for everyone, not the strikers, the midfielders or the defenders. It is a problem of a team that did not understand that this was a key aspect of the match.”

(Reporting by Fernando Kallas; Editing by Hugh Lawson)