Real Madrid after seven games under Mourinho: The A4 pages and an unsolved equation

“Football does not end at minute 90; it runs all the way to the last line of the bank statement.”

After the derby at the Metropolitano, Real Madrid sit fourth in La Liga, six points behind Barcelona. Seven matches. Six points. A red card for Dean Huijsen. A list of refereeing errors printed and handed to the press. And above all those numbers, a question nobody in the press room wanted to ask out loud: in those seven matches, what kind of football did Real Madrid actually play?

I stayed behind after the press conference, reading my notes again. Forty minutes of argument about referees. Almost none about tactics. In the corner of the room, a Spanish photographer asked me in broken English: “Are we watching a cover-up?” I did not answer right away. But I remembered the rule I set for myself at seventeen, as an intern in London: data first, emotion second. And in my hands at that moment there was no single metric. Only sheets of paper.

Context: a return staked on personal credibility

This is José Mourinho’s first season back after President Florentino Pérez brought him to Madrid again. Pérez, by all accounts, never truly lost faith in Mourinho, and finally brought him home in the summer. Mourinho’s first term ended in tension after he lost the support of several important dressing-room figures. That precedent must be remembered by anyone analysing this club. A return underwritten by the president’s personal credibility always cuts both ways: greater patience, but also a higher reputational cost of failure.

After seven matches, the team sits fourth. The gap to Barcelona is six points — not yet a tragedy, but not the gap of a title contender playing at its real level. The derby defeat at the Metropolitano is the sharpest data point: Huijsen sent off, the attack almost vanishing in the second half, and after the final whistle the coaching staff deciding that the subject to discuss was the officiating. Ahead lies a trip to Camp Nou within a month. That is the context every judgement should be placed in.

Core: reading structure when there are no metrics

Start with what can be verified. Across seven matches, no process data has been published in full: no xG, no PPDA, no number of passes into the final third. That means I cannot prove with numbers that Real Madrid played badly or well. But even without numbers, tactical structure can still be read from what happens on the pitch — and I keep my old rule: every claim must be backed by multiple independent sources, or explicitly flagged.

The common description — and I am careful with the word “common”, because it is not evidence — is that Real Madrid attack with a single plan: get the ball to Mbappé and wait. The consequence is that when opponents set up a low block, the team has no other route forward. The Tchouaméni–Valverde midfield pivot is judged to lack variety in distribution: no line-breaking passes, no circulation that forces the opponent to shift as a block. That is the classic structural flaw of a team with only one destination.

Then there is the positional overlap between Mbappé and Vinícius. Two elite attackers operating in the same zone. The consequence is not only lost width; it is lost linkage and lost defensive cover on the abandoned flank. In modern football, the model of “two left-leaning wingers, no connecting nine” has long been recognised as a balance problem. Real Madrid sit right in the middle of it.

The defence does not hold either. Huijsen was sent off in the derby, and by all accounts his partner did not compensate for the spaces left behind. A young, error-prone centre-back beside a partner who is not truly stable — that is the formula that makes a whole system brittle under pressure. When the back line wobbles, midfield drops, and the gap between midfield and attack widens. That is the spiral this team is caught in.

But the clearest tactical flaw, to me, is not in defence. It is that the forwards do not press. The historic Mourinho is known for two halves: defensive organisation and fire-lighting. The second half only works when attacking players accept off-ball work. At this Real Madrid, by all accounts, the forwards do not press actively and do not move off the ball. When the attack does not run, the defence must drop deeper. When the defence drops deeper, the distance to Mbappé grows. And the ball has to reach Mbappé through a long pass — the only option left. In a big club’s dressing room, stars failing to execute tactical demands is usually not only a tactical issue. It is a soft signal about the coach’s authority.

This is where I have to talk about what interests me most in this whole story: the mechanism. Mourinho printing his referee list and handing it to the press is not an impulsive act. It is a named communication mechanism: pressure redirection. When results are poor, people need a new topic to talk about for the next forty minutes. Referees are the cheapest topic, the easiest to verify by eye, and the most emotional. Football does not end at minute 90; it runs all the way to the last line of the bank statement — and on that statement, the line item for “arguing with referees” is always cheaper than fixing an attacking system.

What caught my attention was not Mourinho’s behaviour. It was the club’s response. By all accounts, Real Madrid published a match report whose headline said the referee’s performance decided the derby. When an individual criticises referees, that is a coach’s reaction. When a club issues an official message of the same content, that is an institutional position. At that point the story is no longer “Mourinho is talking about referees again”. It is “Real Madrid has chosen to talk about referees”.

Three independent outlets — AS, Radio MARCA, MARCA — appear in this picture with their own commentators: José Félix Díaz, Roberto Gómez, David Sánchez. Three different angles, three different papers, converging in one direction. When multiple independent outlets say the same thing, it is a signal worth recording. But I must be careful: converging opinion is not data evidence. It is evidence of a media trend, not of a tactical truth.

Contrarian angle: what the majority says may not be the truest thing

Here I want to reframe the issue differently. Because I have learned, sometimes expensively, that what is shouted loudest is not always what is most correct.

First, the refereeing complaints may have a real basis. Two specific situations are named: Lee Kang In on Valverde, and Romero on Bellingham. If those red-card offences are real, then the club saying so is not wrong technically. The issue is not whether they have the right to complain. The issue is what that complaint is being used to cover in the same window of time.

Second, the prevailing view — by all accounts — is still that Atlético deserved to win. That means that even if the referee erred, the result is not overturned. A refereeing grievance is not the same as a competitive injustice. This is the line many people blur when arguing about officials: “the referee was wrong” and “my team was robbed” are two different statements.

Third — and this is the point I want readers to hold onto most — seven matches is far too few. The very analysis I am drawing on concedes Mourinho needs more time. Seven matches, one derby defeat, six points adrift. If the team wins the Clásico at Camp Nou, this story will be rewritten from scratch. Six points in October is not the destiny of a season; it is only the current state of things.

And there is one more thing that stops me writing this with total confidence. Some of the defensive personnel and squad configuration details cited in the source do not match what I can verify publicly. The positional arrangement, the player list in each line — there are points I cannot cross-check. I am not saying someone fabricated. I am saying: if I cannot verify it, I will not write it as fact. That is my first principle, from the day I was a seventeen-year-old girl told by an editor that girls watch football with emotion, not with the books. I once mispronounced a player’s name on camera and was mocked for it; but I am never wrong about what I have witnessed, and I never present an unverified detail as fact.

There is another possibility the quickest reactors do not want to look at: the crisis may be overpriced. In football, the first seven matches of a new manager have never been enough to conclude a whole project. What is happening in Madrid may be a genuine collapse, or it may be a normal transition phase inflated into a final verdict simply because the name on the bulletin is too big. I do not pick a side. I only say both possibilities exist, and people are being allowed to hear only one.

What is worth tracking

Fans are the ones who pay, but they are usually the last to see the books. They are shown the sheets about referees, shown the match report, shown everything except the real performance data of the team they pay to watch. Real Madrid’s problem right now is not the referee, and it is not necessarily Mourinho either. The problem is a giant club without an answer to the simplest question in football: apart from giving the ball to Mbappé, what else does this team know how to do?

I will be watching the Clásico at Camp Nou within the coming month. Not only to see who wins. But to see who submits documents afterwards — and whether those documents are a data sheet, or more sheets of paper.

A manager can be loved for what he says in a press conference. A team is only judged by what it produces on the pitch. And the final question I leave for those following along with me: in an attacking system with no second route, where is the money?