Mourinho's Real Madrid Return: The Late Winner and What Changes on the Team

Real Madrid beat Espanyol 2-1 away at RCDE Stadium in Barcelona on Saturday, 22 August 2026, in the match that marked Jose Mourinho’s return to the club’s bench, thirteen years after he left in 2013. The winner came deep into stoppage time: in the 90th minute, debutant Carlos Espi latched onto a Kylian Mbappe pass inside the box and beat goalkeeper Dmitrovic.

This was Mourinho’s first official game back because Real Madrid’s originally scheduled La Liga 2026-27 opener against Real Sociedad had been postponed — several squad members were still involved in the 2026 World Cup and returned to their clubs after the Spanish season had already started. In practice, the Espanyol match already counted as matchday two.

How the match unfolded

Real Madrid took the lead in just the 9th minute, with Jude Bellingham rising above the defense to head in an Arda Guler cross. Espanyol equalized before halftime, around the 30-minute mark, through Alex Calatrava. After that, the game tightened up, with few clear chances on either side heading into the closing stages.

That’s when Mourinho’s substitutions paid off: Carlos Espi, who had come on shortly before, received the ball from Mbappe inside the box and finished cleanly to complete the comeback in stoppage time. The result gave Real Madrid their first three points of the season and an emotional finish for the Portuguese coach, who celebrated intensely on the touchline.

The starting eleven was Courtois in goal; Dumfries, Konate, Huijsen and Carreras across the back line; Valverde and Bernardo Silva in midfield; Bellingham, Arda Guler and Vinicius Jr further forward; and Mbappe up top. Ferland Mendy, Eder Militao and Rodrygo were sidelined through injury.

The six players who made their debut

The lineup made immediate room for the club’s summer signings. Six players made their official debut for the club in the same match:

Konate was the only one of the six to play the entire match, forming the center-back pairing alongside Dean Huijsen. Cucurella, widely tipped as a starter through preseason, began on the bench and only entered in the second half — a sign that Mourinho is still testing combinations before settling on a starting left-back.

Bellingham moved closer to goal

After the game, Mourinho publicly confirmed a positional change that had been tested during preseason: he wants Jude Bellingham playing as a number 10, close to the opposition box, rather than dropped deeper as a holding or box-to-box midfielder. According to the coach, pulling the Englishman out of that role would cost the team exactly what makes him dangerous: “If he plays as a 6 or an 8, we lose his proximity to goal, and I like Jude in this version.”

The header goal in the 9th minute backed up the argument on the pitch — Bellingham was named man of the match on his debut under the new coach. Mourinho had already signaled the plan in preseason interviews; the result gave him a first public example to defend the choice.

The public defense of Vinicius Jr

The other topic that dominated the post-match press conference was the treatment Vinicius Jr received from opposing defenders. Just three minutes in, defender Calatrava kicked the Brazilian in the back while he was down, without being shown a card. Asked about the pattern of hard fouls the forward regularly faces, Mourinho didn’t hold back: “He’s not a saint, but what they do to him is too much.”

The coach described a pattern he says repeats match after match — different players rotating the fouls to avoid any single one of them piling up yellow cards — and called it bullying: “We live in a social era against bullying. With Vinicius, we’re still in an era of bullying from rival teams and their fans.” The comment reignites a discussion that has followed the forward since the Carlo Ancelotti era, now with Mourinho publicly taking up his defense at the very first press conference of the new cycle.

What it signals for the season

One result doesn’t define a team, but the opener already offered clues about what Mourinho wants to prioritize: new signings entering gradually, Bellingham repositioned as an attacking focal point, and a public stance protecting Vinicius Jr in front of the press and referees. The natural next step is watching whether these three threads — the debutants’ rotation, Bellingham’s role and how referees handle fouls on Vinicius — hold up over the following rounds of the Spanish season.