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Kylian Mbappé returned to the Cathedral where he experienced his epiphany in 2024, his resurrection born after hitting rock bottom, and delivered something like salvation. Exactly a year since he missed a penalty there, a bad moment he later said was a good one, the Frenchman was back at San Mamés on Wednesday night.
Last time, he missed a second penalty in a week, an awakening accompanying failure; this time, he scored two goals in an hour and set up another, light let in through the dark again. As the Frenchman headed off the pitch early, Madrid 3-0 up against Athletic Bilbao with 15 minutes left, he embraced Xabi Alonso, who is still his manager.
By the time Madrid got to bed in their hotel on Tuesday, showing just how serious they were by travelling to Bilbao the day before, Barcelona had beaten Atletico Madrid 3-1 in the first of two games brought forward a month to accommodate the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, successfully overshadowing the Copa del Rey and shunting the best league meetings of the season into midweek, and leaving Madrid four points behind. Leaving Alonso on the edge too, or so it goes.
Last year Hansi Flick called it “Shit November”, but Barcelona overcame it. This year, it was Madrid’s turn. When Real won the clásico at the end of October, Alonso’s side moved five points clear at the top of the table, a lead that didn’t look like was going to be relinquished any time soon. They had actually won a big game after a year of losing all of them, and there was a superiority about them, a sense of solidarity if not yet a system exactly. In short, a shift. Because Barcelona were in bits. It was only 2-1 but Wojciech Szczesny made nine saves in Barça’s goal.
Since then, Barcelona have won five in a row. Perhaps it was not always that brilliant and the beating at Stamford Bridge appeared to deliver a painful truth, but the results came and with Pedri and Raphinha back on Tuesday night. Against Atlético they really did look like Barcelona again. Madrid, meanwhile, had been heading in the other direction, or more accurately not really heading in any direction at all. “In the future we’re going to need a lot of what we did today,” Alonso said the evening of the clásico but mostly they didn’t have anything much. And with the fixture list shifted to allow them to fit the NFL into the Santiago Bernabéu, they went away three times in a row – and didn’t win any of them.
At Rayo, Elche and Girona, Madrid drew and were mostly dreadful, although in Girona they had at least forced chances, been a little more proactive. The high press Alonso wanted was absent, the football in the middle too, the control and solidity simply not there, and as for the attitude and application: forget it. Alonso’s system, seemingly emerging in the United States for the Club World Cup and, slowly, in the opening weeks of the season just wasn’t there (yet). Before heading off to Bilbao, Alonso was asked what his team was playing at. “Football,” he replied, but what football, how? And was it the type of football his footballers play? Here was a coach that was counter cultural.
As bad was what was happening below the surface – and, importantly, on the surface too, tensions building and barely hidden. The lasting image of the clásico, wouldn’t so much be the goals they scored as Vinícius’ reaction at being removed, mouthing off as he went marching off.
His “apology” didn’t help either, very pointedly saying sorry to everyone except his coach. There was no public backing of the manager, no reinforcing of his authority, the presidential view that Vinícius just shouldn’t have been taken off in the first place. Instead, Alonso was chipped away at, familiar hounds released. Before playing Olympiakos in Athens, there had been conversations internally, an attempt to release the tension. And before Bilbao too. This needed fixing. “Yes, I have spoken to the president again: the conversations are positive,” Alonso said. “We talk about turning the results around.”
While focus did shift a little towards the players, the ultimate “fix” hung heavy: it always does at a club where a ‘crisis’ is never more than a couple of defeats away, and there’s always someone else who can coach. Defeats? Draws will do. Madrid arrived four points behind, a nine-point swing since the clásico. Sure, they had a game in hand, but it was Athletic where they were beaten last season. And if they hadn’t won in Vallecas, the Martínez Valero and Montilivi how were they going to win here at San Mamés, a place of community, traditional and liturgy so revered, so powerful, they call the Cathedral?
Like this. Their way, Madrid’s way, Alonso adapting to his players. After the victory in Greece, José Luis Mendilibar, the Olympiakos manager, had said that Vinícius and Mbappé don’t run back, which leaves them fresh to attack – and, against his high line Madrid had certainly attacked, streaming into the spaces as Mbappé scored four. Madrid had also conceded three. If Mendilibar’s analysis could be conceived of as criticism, it could also be seen as a suggestion, and at San Mamés it was similar.
“Athletic play with a high line and there are more spaces, it’s more complicated for us against Girona or Elche; we have to improve against low blocks,” Thibaut Courtois admitted. “We said that we have to stop talking and start acting. If you don’t play at 100% you can be beaten easily.”
Athletic, struggling all season, were poor, lacking goals and the intensity that is supposed to come as standard: wide open and weak, oddly docile. Madrid had created three opportunities inside five minutes, Athletic overrun, and when Ernesto Valverde’s side did create a couple of chances, they were stopped by Courtois, for whom miracles come as standard.
If that urges caution, if that won’t always be so easy as it was in Bilbao and Athens and any conclusions remain tentative, to be tested again when Manchester City come next week, this mattered. This was Madrid’s best performance of the season, releasing the tension in the short term. It felt like a step in the right direction, something a little more than just stemming the bleeding, although that was the immediate concern: some accommodation found, Alonso adapting to more to the players perhaps than they had to him. It felt significant, if only as a staging of some sort rapprochement, even if it was had-to-be done rather than heartfelt, when Vinícius went off and embraced the manager.
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Partly circumstantial and partly a shift, Alonso went for something closer to a 4-4-2, although Aurélien Tchouameni often dropped between the central defenders releasing the full backs and looking a little more like his wing-back system that had seemingly been abandoned. Arda Güler was left out, Vinícius and Mbappé were up front, Jude Bellingham part of a muscular midfielder rather than No 10, and Madrid were direct. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s diagonals were at the heart of it, the origin of the first two goals and much more. El País called his right foot “angelic.” Alas, he was soon injured again, and the Englishman is now expected to be out for at least two months.
If there is a question of the collective functioning against the individual and a dependency on Mbappé – and there is – it is hard to avoid, even if you want to. But even in the bad moments, the forward has been extraordinary.
And it all started here. When he missed a penalty at San Mamés last season off the back of missing one at Anfield, something shifted. Mbappé later admitted that he had “hit rock bottom”, which in truth seemed a bit dramatic, but he insisted it was good for him. It came as a realisation, making him see that he had to shake off his timidity, play with personality. He arrived at San Mamés on 4 December 2024 having scored 10 goals in 20 games, the kind of ‘crisis’ most players would kill for. He arrived at San Mamés on 3 December 2025 having scored 57 in 58 since. He departed again having scored 59 in 59.
Mbappé’s goals here were extraordinary goals too. For the first, he controlled Alexander-Arnold’s long diagonal, an impeccable first touch taking him to the right while Iñigo Lekue slid by and out of shot on the left. Space opening, he ran from near the half-way line and produced a superb shot from the edge of the area. For the second he did what he does so often and so well, albeit a little further than normal, scoring from outside the area again. Opening his body out as if going to the far post, just enough for Unai Simón to take a step he shouldn’t, a turn of the ankle and Mbappé instead bent it in at the near post. Between those, he had nodded a clipped Alexander-Arnold cross back to Eduardo Camavinga to head in.
Five kilos lighter than he was last season, Mbappé already has 25 goals and four assists in this campaign. He has 55 in 2025, four off Cristiano Ronaldo’s club record with a month to go. He has more than Vinícius, Bellingham, Rodrygo, Valverde and Güler put together over the last 12 months and almost 60% of Madrid’s goals this season. “Super Mbappé and at last a good Madrid,” ran the cover of Marca. Inside they claimed “Mbappé is Cristiano (and) Ronaldo,” and there was something about the Brazilian’s one-man stampedes in that first goal; as if, as Jorge Valdano liked to put it, the whole herd is attacking. “Infinite”, he had “put out the fire”, AS’s cover said.
“No one has his acceleration, his runs: he’s unstoppable,” Courtois said. “During games I say to myself: how lucky I am to have him on my side.”
