Roberto Mancini vented his anger on Joe Hart after the England goalkeeper criticised his Manchester City team-mates for letting slip a 2-1 lead over Real Madrid at the end of a frantic opening Champions League group game.

All five goals in Real's 3-2 win were scored in the final 21 minutes as City twice took the lead before Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed the late winner. Hart, who will be disappointed he did not save the winger's shot, said: "It's not on. You can't go 2-1 up and lose the game. We can only blame ourselves. They are a very good team and so are we. We dug deep, got a lead twice and threw it away. It's hard to come off the field after losing 3-2 and be positive."

Mancini retorted: "Joe Hart should stay in goal and make saves. If anyone should criticise the team it should be me, not Joe Hart. I am the judge, not Joe Hart."

Edin Dzeko's second-half opener was levelled by Marcelo before Alexsandar Kolarov's free-kick five minutes from time looked likely to secure a famous win for City. But Karim Benzema's finish and Ronaldo's winner secured all three points for José Mourinho's team.

Of Vincent Kompany, who ducked under Ronaldo's shot, Mancini said: "I don't know why – I saw the goal, but I haven't asked him why this happened. Usually he doesn't do this, but the mistake is that he did. We are disappointed for this. You can meet Madrid and lose. We didn't play well in the first half, but by the second half we played well.

"We should have paid more attention. We should learn more courage sometimes. We have international players, we can improve and we should be disappointed that we have lost this point. When you play here, it is not easy. We can leave all the space for Real, but we did what we wanted and scored two goals. The only mistake we made was going too deep with the team."

City are yet to keep a clean sheet this season and Mancini said: "It's difficult to take, not because we lost. You can lose against a team like Real, but also because, with three minutes to go, we were 2-1 up. This is strange. I think we need to improve the situation because we go too deep sometimes and leave the opponents to play easy on the edge of the box."

In a tough group which features four domestic champions, Borussia Dortmund beat Ajax 1-0. "Other teams will lose here," Mancini added. "t is important that we beat Dortmund in the next game."

For Mourinho this was a welcome return to winning form after his side lost 1-0 at Sevilla on Saturday. "For me, this is typical of Real Madrid's DNA," he said. "More important is being proud of the team, no matter the result. I keep saying this to the players, when the feeling is that not in right direction, Real can lose matches fighting like animals like they did, but they cannot lose as they did in Getafe and Sevilla. We continued, we drew level and we carried on."