Watching Real Madrid, they say, is not just watching a club play football. It is being witness to a grand soap opera filled with unpredictable superstars. You could have the time of your life but you might also need the handkerchief.

In the past few weeks, as the faithful will tell you, it has been mostly the handkerchief. For a club that has won everything worth winning, including the hearts of supporters all around the globe with their stylised attacking football, life has been utterly un-Real. With coaches quitting, superstars bickering and matches being lost with alarming regularity, exasperated fans are wondering if this is for real. The team?s sinking fortunes is a global talking point among its ardent supporters and inveterate rivals alike.

Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Luis Figo, Raul, Roberto Carlos, David Beckham, Michael Owen ? just roll those names over your tongue and slosh them in your mind. How could this team lose five matches in a row at the end of the Spanish league last season? And, how could this football club be going down so often, so easily again this season?

On Wednesday, you could see it happening once more. Santiago Bernabeu, they often say, is Real?s near-impregnable fortress. Over the years, the Spanish football club?s imposing home stadium has been a graveyard for most foreign teams. Their visions of conquest often drowned in that giant cauldron of noise.

But that evening, playing in the Champions League against the Italian club AS Roma, Real was down by two goals after just 20 minutes. The luxury-liner version of a football team looked like a rubber dinghy. And Bernabeu was a fragile fortress on the verge of falling. This, it appeared, was Real?s Judgement Day.

For never in its illustrious history has the club lost twice in a row in the Champions League. Losing to German club Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 in an away game was bad enough. But this was humiliation at home. ?They look like strangers who have never played together before,? said the aghast commentator. Roberto Carlos fumbled like a bumbling Keystone Kop. The fans booed him more than the visitors. And, the drums fell silent. For, a defeat here didn?t merely mean a successful club?s premature exit from the tournament. It also meant the possible end of a grand idea that the Spanish club now personifies.

The idea that drives the new-millennium Real is: superstars make an invincible team. And to fulfil it, club president Florentino Perez, who owns one of the largest construction firms in Spain, goes about like a corporate raider, armed with a budget that could easily outstrip those of sub-Saharan countries. Money can?t buy me love, sang The Beatles. Real thinks money can buy trophies.

The new Real is about acquisition. Portuguese superstar Luis Figo was poached from rival Barcelona for a record fee in 2000. It is about buying brands and indulging in excesses. Beckham was bought less for his curling free-kicks and more to increase the club?s revenue from Asia.

Real is also about turning football?s time-tested principles on its head. In the Spanish club, it is the president?s desire and not the coach?s need that is fulfilled. Every football lover in the world knows that Real?s Achilles? heel is its defence. Perez cannot care less. When he wants Beckham like a boy craves for a toy, he gets it. The club even allowed world-class defensive medio Claude Makelele to leave over a wage disagreement.

The first warning signs came last year. In match after match, Real conceded goal after goal. If it still remained in the hunt for a title for much of the season, it was only due to its attacking flair. The thinking seemed to be: how does it matter if we concede two goals as long as we can score three? But it was evident as the 2003-04 season came on its final lap that the team with a record 29 La Liga titles and nine European Cup/Champions League titles was hobbling.

But even in the new footballing season, the thinking remains unchanged. Despite the defence worries, the Spanish club invested heavily again in its attacking options this year, getting Liverpool striker Michael Owen on its rolls.

But offence is not always the best defence. And on Wednesday, a Bernabeu bristling with catcalls and whistles, saw how embarrassing the team had become.

Real?s back-four looked leakier than ever: the first goal coming barely after three minutes of play, the second in the 22nd minute. The attack was as incoherent as a gurgling baby: little inventiveness, no imagination. You could foresee the next day?s headline: Real humiliation for Los galacticos.

And then, the unthinkable happened. Like an engine that mysteriously roars back to life without reason, Real started playing with purpose and passion. Was it a sudden burst of self-pride, or choice words of wisdom shouted from the sidelines that had done the trick? Even the commentators couldn?t fathom the mystery of the inspirational burst.

Now Zidane could put no foot wrong, Figo was making his mazy runs on the flanks and Beckham was winning balls. Much before the change of ends, Raul brought one back and later added another after Figo had equalised. And, when the much-jeered Carlos fired one of his trademark cannonballs into the roof of the Roma net, the men in all white had completed the turnaround. ?Crisis, what crisis?? asked the commentator, quickly changing tune.

It could yet be a false dawn. For Real?s grand idea ? superstars make blockbuster movies, script be damned ? has been severely tested. Wednesday?s win has bought them time but the Spanish club needs trophies and titles. And that won?t be easy.

Great ideas never die. But sometimes, they do fade away.