Where to Now for Real Madrid After Champions League Exit at Hands of Juventus?

Daniel Carvajal fouled Carlos Tevez on the halfway line as 90 minutes ticked over. Four more remained, and a clinching Real Madrid goal was still possible. But supporters could be seen leaving their seats anyway. 

James Rodriguez then flashed a long, diagonal ball to Isco. He couldn't reach it. More seats emptied. 

A minute later, Gianluigi Buffon halted Carvajal in the penalty area. A few more again. 

"A late comeback shouldn't be beyond them," announced Sky Sports' Rob Hawthorne. But it was. Seconds later, every seat emptied when Iker Casillas botched a throw-in.  

Exasperated, bewildered, the Santiago Bernabeu left shaking its collective head.

Only four days earlier, following the draw with Valencia, Carvajal had waved "goodbye to the league" at the same venue. Now it was worse. Much worse. "For Madrid, the worst punishment possible: almost three months to next season," wrote Juanma Trueba at AS.  

That such a line sums it up is extraordinary. Unfathomable almost, given what was once possible. But that's the reality—Saturday had already put an end to Real's league title bid; Wednesday did the same to the second of two cup defences. And it did so on a night in which a giant image inside the Bernabeu, accompanied by the line "My Real attack," depicted Alfredo Di Stefano—the great whose Real Madrid goal tally Cristiano Ronaldo equalled in the opening half. 

"Football has a novelist's soul. Sadistic, but a novelist's," added Trueba, remarking on how Juventus, Alvaro Morata and the night itself wrote an unexpected script. 

Down on the pitch, some Real Madrid players departed in a hurry. Others stood motionless, hands on heads. "How did it come to this?" seemed to be the overriding thought.

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A once rampant outfit derailed, identifying the contributing factors is straightforward—untimely injuries, form lapses, fatigue, scheduling, depth issues, squad imbalances, rotation questions, suffocating pressure. But it's grasping how they all coincided so spectacularly that's difficult.  

"Madrid are going to win the league with weeks to spare, aren't they?" asked the Guardian's Sid Lowe at the height of Real's dominance back in November. He wasn't alone. 

Compare that to now: "Now the club will begin the rebuilding process which I fear is going to be a rather unpleasant spectacle," remarked AS editor Alfredo Relano on Thursday. 

It feels like one of those where-do-you-go-from-here junctures. 

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Naturally, the immediate focus will be on Carlo Ancelotti. "A trophyless season tends to end with a jobless manager," Lowe neatly said in the the aftermath of Wednesday's match. Six months ago, praise was raining down on the Italian, the club's fans full of adoration for an endearing character. But it's only ever founded upon success; patience at the Bernabeu is as readily found as space on a London tube. 

Last season, Ancelotti needed the European Cup to prolong his stay under Florentino Perez. This season, one suspects he needed the same. And yet, the speculation surrounding the manager encapsulates the issue facing Real Madrid: will change actually lead to better?

Entering the current campaign, Los Blancos possessed the most successful boss in Champions League history, the reigning Ballon d'Or winner, the world's most expensive player, a number of World Cup champions, a World Cup Golden Boot winner, the most lethal strike force on the continent, the LFP's "Best Midfielder" and some of Europe's finest young talent.

Improving on that mix of personnel is difficult. Might Zinedine Zidane make a difference? Could Paul Pogba or David De Gea be an answer? Who knows, but what's certain is that change doesn't automatically foster success. And Real Madrid should know that better than anyone, given the yearly turnover that's witnessed in Chamartin. 

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Such a situation leaves Real Madrid facing a delicate summer ahead. In 2014-15, raw talent, dollar symbols and the sum of the parts haven't triumphed; something else is needed.

Of course, under Perez, the response is likely to be predictable: spend. "Each year, we do the impossible in order to win," the president said in 2013, pointing to his club's record in luring football's elite to the Bernabeu. 

But in defeat on Wednesday, Ancelotti spoke of the "little details," per Sport, portraying a different way of thinking—that grander isn't always better, that there are intangibles that are needed to underpin it all. 

Somewhere in the middle ground, you feel, lies the answer. It's just whether Real Madrid are prepared to go searching for it.