Will Mourinho's new Real Madrid succeed? | OneFootball

Seven matchdays after his return, the new Mourinho’s Real Madrid already knows what it is to lose a derby with a man down, concede at home, and hear whistles at the Bernabéu with the result still in the balance. The project that promised to restore muscle and authority to the club now finds itself at the end of September leading nothing, sitting fourth in the table and behind a Barcelona side that stands alone at the top. It wins matches, but for now it convinces almost no one, and that contradiction defines a start in which the results are not quite enough to fully hide the cracks.

At the Metropolitano came the latest blow on Sunday, a derby that ended 2-1 with Grimaldo converting the decisive penalty. Los Blancos held on for more than forty minutes with ten men and came apart from within, unable to sustain the initiative expected of a title contender. To understand why a squad of this caliber projects so much fragility, it is worth rewinding to June, when Florentino Pérez sealed the Portuguese coach’s return thirteen years later on a three-season contract.

A warning from the very start

The league opener had already warned of what was coming. On the opening matchday, the Madrid side suffered to the point of exhaustion in Cornellà and only beat Espanyol in stoppage time, with academy product Carlos Espí scoring a 1-2 winner that was as agonizing as it was revealing. The brighter moment came weeks later with the win over Inter by 2-1 in their Champions League opener, settled by Mbappé and Valverde before the crowd grew uneasy again in the closing stages.

Between those matches came the flashes many had hoped to see from Real Madrid, and the 4-1 over Rayo Vallecano at the Bernabéu was the clearest of them, the team’s most complete performance of the season before it took its foot off the gas. And yet, even when the scoreboard looked favorable, the same script kept returning: ferocious starts followed by second halves in which the team shrinks, gives up ground, and survives far more than it dominates.

That contrast between favoritism and fragility was no last-minute surprise. It had already been flagged beforehand. It appeared in pre-match analysis by odds and prediction experts such as those at the comparison platform ApuestasOnline, where Madrid came out ahead on the numbers but without the solidity expected of a credible contender. In fact, prediction models had Mourinho’s team as derby favorites by the slimmest of margins, an edge based more on their firepower than on their defensive structure. The warning signs were there, and the Metropolitano merely confirmed them.

At the root of it all is a date and an uncomfortable precedent. The project was born to put right a turbulent previous campaign, the same one in which Xabi Alonso was dismissed after 233 days in the dugout with the dressing room shaken. Mourinho arrived with the label of a rebuilder, the coach capable of restoring order to a disoriented group, and his first public message pointed exactly in that direction: less epic drama, more balance.

The team that runs the least

The numbers, however, paint a team that still does not recognize itself in that idea of restraint and control the new project promised. At this start of the season, Real Madrid have been the team that runs the least in Europe’s five major leagues, a baffling statistic for a coach who has always made intensity his trademark. The 2-3 win in Elche, which brought three points but once again left the defense under scrutiny, fits with that lack of physical depth that is beginning to explain so many second-half collapses.

Fifteen points from a possible twenty-one, with five wins and two defeats, make for a record that is far from catastrophic, but one that also does nothing to clear up the deeper doubts the team has carried since the opening round. Mbappé is carrying much of the attack with seven league goals, and almost the entire offensive burden revolves around the Frenchman. That dependence on a single name is perhaps the trait that best captures this Madrid side of dazzling starts and muddled finishes, so effective when the striker delivers and so vulnerable the moment he fades.

There is also a bigger subject still pending: Europe, which no September statistic is yet in any position to fully resolve. Mourinho won a Champions League with Inter in 2010, but he never lifted it with Madrid, and his first spell at the club fell just short more than once. That European unfinished business weighs as much as, if not more than, La Liga in the standard by which his second spell will be judged, and the 2-1 over Inter was only the first step on a long road.

None of this inconsistency is new, nor has it caught anyone by surprise. Even in the keys to the European opener, one could already sense a team clinging to its individuals, capable of winning through talent when the collective plan fails to appear, but exposed as soon as the opponent stands up to it for the full ninety minutes.

The new Mourinho Real Madrid is, for now, a team with two faces, just as capable of sweeping an opponent aside as it is of shrinking immediately afterward. It can overwhelm for forty minutes and then retreat in the next stretch until it looks as though it is defending a lead that does not exist. The promised rebuild is real, but it is moving forward in fits and starts, sustained by Mbappé’s goals and by an idea that still has not taken hold in the legs of his players. Seven matchdays after that return surrounded by expectation, the club that wanted to regain its muscle and authority is still leading nothing, fourth in the table, and sent off with whistles in its own stadium.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.