Real Madrid’s return to the top of Spanish football this season has come with José Mourinho back in the dugout, Kylian Mbappé leading the attack, and a plot twist nobody quite saw coming in early September. The biggest Real Madrid news of the campaign so far isn’t a transfer or a trophy chase; it’s a single missed penalty in Seville and a legal case that refuses to stay closed.
Mourinho’s second spell started the way his first one did, with wins piling up fast. Madrid opened with a 4-0 demolition of promoted Málaga, then put four past Real Sociedad in their first home league match, Mbappé scoring a hat-trick in that one. Three matches, three wins – a start strong enough that fans began checking football team rankings at tips.gg to see how far ahead of the pack Madrid had already pulled. Then Betis happened.
Mourinho’s Return and the Betis Shock
Real Madrid lost 1-0 at Real Betis on September 4, and the manner of the defeat stung more than the scoreline suggests. Substitute Troy Parrott, an Irish forward new to the club, scored the only goal in the 81st minute. Thibaut Courtois had actually done well to save a header from another Betis player moments earlier, only for Parrott to bury the rebound. Then, deep into stoppage time, Madrid had a lifeline: a penalty. Mbappé stepped up. Betis goalkeeper Álvaro Valles guessed right and saved it, sealing what Reuters called a stunning result at La Cartuja.
Mourinho didn’t accept that Madrid had been outplayed. “I don’t know how we lost because we played very well collectively. I cannot fault the attitude of any of my players. We deserved to win but deserving to win does not give you points,” he said afterward. He also took aim at refereeing “criteria” in the game, a line that shifted some of the post-match conversation away from his own team’s finishing and toward the officiating. Betis, for their part, came away calling it a memorable win rather than a fluke, and which account holds up depends on whose version you trust. Either way, the result ended Madrid’s three-match winning run and gave Barcelona, still the pace-setter in recent seasons, an early psychological edge.
The Asencio Case and a Lingering Discipline Problem
While the football story played out, Real Madrid was also managing a legal and reputational one involving defender Raúl Asencio. Prosecutors dropped charges against him in a case involving the alleged sharing of a sex video involving a minor, and Asencio was acquitted. That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t, not entirely.
Three former youth players connected to the same case, accused of recording and sharing sexual videos of two teenage women, one of them underage, received one-year prison sentences. Those sentences were suspended, contingent on the men committing no further offenses, after the victims told the court they had forgiven the defendants. The suspended sentences complicate any tidy version of the story where Asencio’s acquittal simply closes the chapter.
There’s also a separate thread: Mourinho confirmed that the club opened its own disciplinary proceeding against Asencio, not over the sex-tape case but following a DUI conviction. Mourinho was clear that Asencio would remain part of his plans while that process runs its course, a pragmatic call that keeps a defender available but leaves an open disciplinary file hanging over the squad, even as the team tries to move forward on the pitch while both matters are still being sorted out off it.
What’s Next: Fixtures and the Table
Real Madrid’s schedule doesn’t slow down. Rayo Vallecano visit for an 8pm kickoff on September 12, followed by a trip to face Atlético Madrid on September 20 at 3:15pm, a fixture that always carries extra weight in the capital regardless of league position. Villarreal are on the calendar too, set for October 10 at 9pm CEST, according to the club’s own site.
A Yahoo Sports snapshot from September 11 had Madrid sitting third in La Liga with a 3-0-1 record, which lines up with the run described above: three wins to open, one defeat at Betis. League tables move fast this early in a season, but the figure fits everything else in the public record. Barcelona remain the team to catch, and nothing in the last month has changed that basic fact, even if Mbappé’s missed penalty in Seville is the moment everyone’s still talking about.
For a club that spent the summer selling the idea of a fresh start under Mourinho, September has delivered both proof of concept and a reminder of how thin the margins are. Four goals against Málaga, a hat-trick against Sociedad, then a penalty saved when it mattered most, with the Asencio file still open and the fixtures already stacking up. None of it settles anything yet, which is probably the most honest way to describe Real Madrid four games into the season.
