Mbappé Answers Ballon d’Or Defeat as Real Madrid Cruise 3-0 at Racing Santander to Keep Title Race Alive

Kylian Mbappé scored on his first appearance since losing the Ballon d’Or to Harry Kane as Real Madrid beat Racing Santander 3-0 at El Sardinero on Sunday, keeping José Mourinho’s side firmly in the La Liga title race.

Mbappé opened the scoring from the penalty spot in the 11th minute, Jude Bellingham doubled the lead ten minutes later with his 50th goal for the club, and Yan Diomande added a third before half-time as Madrid recorded a sixth consecutive victory in all competitions, according to TNT Sports.

The win, Madrid’s ninth in 11 league games this season, moved the visitors to 27 points, three behind leaders Barcelona and one behind second-placed Atlético Madrid. Barcelona had thrashed Alavés 6-1 on Saturday, while Atlético beat Levante 2-0 earlier the same day.

For Mbappé, the goal carried a significance beyond the three points. Six days earlier, the French forward had finished runner-up to Bayern Munich striker Kane in the Ballon d’Or vote, losing by just 28 points, 1,055 to 1,027, in a ceremony at the London Palladium. His response in Santander was swift, decisive and, in the context of a turbulent week, emphatic.

“We were very strong in the first half. We came out to play well,” Mourinho told reporters after the match, according to AFP. “The team is growing, playing well; I think we should have scored even more goals with the chances we had.”

How the match unfolded

Madrid settled the contest in a devastating opening 36 minutes. The breakthrough arrived in the 11th minute when Mbappé won a penalty and stepped up to convert it himself, dispatching the spot-kick with confidence, according to TNT Sports.

The second goal followed in the 21st minute and was, in its construction, the finest of the afternoon. Arda Güler threaded a superb pass through the Racing defence, and Bellingham raced on to it, rounded goalkeeper Julen Agirrezabala and passed the ball into an empty net. It was the England midfielder’s 50th goal since joining the Spanish club in 2023.

Diomande made it three nine minutes before the interval. Meeting a poor Racing clearance first time on the half-volley from the edge of the penalty area, the Ivorian found the top-left corner with a powerful strike that left Agirrezabala with no chance.

It was, according to match reporting, the first time Madrid had scored three goals in the first half of a La Liga away match since May 2024, when they did so against Villarreal.

Racing, newly promoted and playing in La Liga for the first time in 14 seasons, had been unbeaten in their first five home league matches of the campaign. That record, and their resistance, ended abruptly in the face of Madrid’s first-half intensity. The hosts, who sit 16th in the table, briefly believed they had a route back into the game after the break when they were awarded a penalty for an Aurélien Tchouaméni handball, only for the decision to be overturned after a lengthy VAR check.

The second half belonged more to the home side than the first. Racing improved considerably, and their top scorer, Yassir Zabiri, missed two decent chances to reduce the deficit. Zabiri has scored eight league goals this season, a tally matched among the division’s leading marksmen only by Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal.

Madrid, however, remained the more dangerous side. Mbappé struck the right-hand woodwork on the hour mark, Bellingham was denied a second goal by a tight offside call late on, and substitute Endrick narrowly missed the target with a long-range attempt. Racing coach José Alberto was left to rue the opening goal. “(Madrid’s penalty award) annoys me,” he told DAZN, according to AFP. “Evidently, we came across a great Madrid, who put us under a lot of pressure in the first half hour and were much better than us, but what conditioned everything was the first goal and the penalty.”

Mbappé’s record and the numbers

The headline numbers attached to Mbappé’s afternoon tell a story of remarkable consistency. His 11th-minute penalty was his 12th league goal of the season, leaving him three behind Barcelona’s Raphinha, who leads the scoring chart with 15 after netting twice in the 6-1 win over Alavés.

More strikingly, the goal meant Mbappé has now scored against all 24 opponents he has faced in La Liga, a perfect record built since his arrival in Spain. According to figures published by Opta, he has scored 68 goals in just 76 league appearances for Real Madrid. He has also converted 18 penalties in the competition since the start of the 2024-25 season, a total no other player has matched in that period.

The timing mattered as much as the statistics. Mbappé’s week had been dominated by events away from the pitch. After finishing second to Kane in the Ballon d’Or voting, he was forced to apologise following a social media backlash over a video in which he joked about former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, according to AFP. The controversy also affected Real Madrid’s television coverage in China, with the club’s match and other Spanish league fixtures omitted from Chinese state television broadcasts over the weekend.

Against that backdrop, a goal inside 11 minutes, won and converted by the player himself, was the cleanest possible answer. Mbappé did not celebrate extravagantly. He did not need to. The performance, and the result, did the talking.

It was also his second decisive contribution in as many weekends. Seven days earlier, at Camp Nou, he had scored both goals in Madrid’s 2-1 Clásico victory over Barcelona, the second of them his 100th for the club.

Bellingham passes Zidane

If Mbappé’s goal was the headline, Bellingham’s was the history. The 21st-minute finish took the England international to 50 goals for Real Madrid, moving him past Zinedine Zidane’s tally for the club, and he did so in 76 fewer appearances than the Frenchman needed, according to TNT Sports.

That comparison deserves to be handled with care. Zidane was a creator first and a scorer second, a playmaker whose genius was measured in control, vision and the weight of his passing rather than in raw goal totals. Bellingham, by contrast, is a midfielder who arrives in the penalty area with the timing and appetite of a striker. But the numbers still say something real about the scale of what the 23-year-old has achieved since arriving from Borussia Dortmund in 2023.

His goal at El Sardinero was a showcase of his best qualities: the run beyond the defence, the composure to round the goalkeeper rather than shoot early, and the calm to pass the ball into an empty net. It was also, notably, created by Güler, whose pass split the Racing defence and underlined the Turkish playmaker’s growing importance to Mourinho’s side.

Bellingham was denied a second goal late in the game when his stoppage-time effort was ruled out for offside, a decision that kept his tally at 50 for the night. On this evidence, 51 will not be long in coming.

Mourinho’s Madrid find their rhythm

The wider significance of the victory lies in what it says about Mourinho’s Madrid. The Portuguese coach, reappointed at the Bernabéu in the summer, returned to the Clásico fixture for the first time in more than 13 years on 25 October and left Camp Nou with a 2-1 win that, according to Opta’s analysis, blew the title race wide open.

Mbappé scored both goals that day, the first after a failed clearance from Barcelona defender Gerard Martín and the second, in the 87th minute, after Eduardo Camavinga pulled the ball back from the right. Raphinha had equalised for Barcelona on the hour mark. The win ended Barcelona’s nine-game winning start to the league season and cut their lead at the top to three points.

Mourinho celebrated the winner by reprising the knee-slide celebration he had famously performed when Cristiano Ronaldo scored a late winner against Manchester City in 2012, during his first spell as Madrid manager. But his words after the match were deliberately sober. “If we win today and lose at El Sardinero, today’s victory doesn’t hold the same weight, because Real Madrid doesn’t play to win at Camp Nou. Real Madrid plays to win championships,” he said.

Sunday’s performance was the answer to his own challenge. Madrid did not merely win at El Sardinero; they won with the authority of a team that has now won six matches in a row in all competitions. Barcelona had won La Liga in each of the previous two seasons, and Madrid had lost two of their opening seven league games this season, a start that threatened to turn the title race into a procession before November. Instead, the gap is three points, and the race is alive.

There is a spine forming in this Madrid side. Güler, who supplied the pass for Bellingham’s goal, has been elevated by Mourinho into the group of players the manager considers untouchable, alongside Federico Valverde, Bellingham and Mbappé, according to a report in Marca. Diomande, who scored the first goal of the Clásico win by chasing a ball into the channel and squaring for Mbappé, has now scored in successive weekends. The team is growing, as Mourinho put it, and the growth is visible in the patterns of play as much as in the results.

Racing’s brave resistance

For Racing Santander, the afternoon was a reminder of the distance between the second tier, where they spent 14 years, and the summit of Spanish football. Their unbeaten home record this season, five matches without defeat at El Sardinero, had been built on organisation and the goals of Zabiri. Against Madrid, they were, in their coach’s own assessment, simply beaten by a better team in the first half hour.

Yet there were positives for the hosts to carry forward. Their second-half performance was markedly better, and Zabiri’s two missed chances, while frustrating, showed that Racing could create openings against one of Europe’s best defences. The overturned penalty, too, will rankle: had it stood, the final hour might have unfolded very differently.

Racing remain 16th in the table, and their season will be decided not by results against Madrid but by matches against the teams around them. The manner of their second-half response, rather than the scoreline, is what their coach will take into the weeks ahead.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Sevilla suffered a 3-1 defeat away to Getafe, a result that moved the hosts into mid-table, while Real Betis continued their best start to a La Liga season through 11 games since 1934 with a 2-1 win over Málaga.

Analysis: Why It Matters

The title race is alive again

A week ago, after the Clásico, the gap was three points and the narrative was that Madrid had blown the race open. A defeat at El Sardinero would have undone all of that work in a single afternoon, restoring a six-point gap and handing Barcelona the momentum of a Madrid stumble. Instead, Madrid did exactly what Mourinho demanded of them: they backed up the Camp Nou win with a routine victory in a fixture that, on paper, carried all the ingredients of a trap. Barcelona’s 6-1 demolition of Alavés on Saturday, in which Raphinha and Yamal each scored twice, was a statement of intent. Madrid’s answer, delivered 24 hours later, was equally clear. With Barcelona on 30 points, Atlético on 28 and Madrid on 27 after 11 games, the top three are separated by a single victory, and the next meeting between Barcelona and Atlético, on Sunday 8 November, will shape the table further. This is, by some distance, the most competitive La Liga title race in years.

Mbappé’s answer was the perfect response

Footballers are often told to let their football do the talking, and rarely is the advice so literally applicable. Mbappé’s week contained a Ballon d’Or defeat by the narrowest of margins, a public apology and a broadcasting blackout in China. Any one of those would have been enough to dominate a player’s week. His response was to win a penalty, score it, and help his team to a comfortable away win within the opening quarter of an hour. The record he extended in the process, scoring against every opponent he has faced in Spain, speaks to a consistency that is easy to understate. Strikers are judged on the goals they score against the teams they are expected to beat as well as the ones they are not. Mbappé has now done both, against all 24 of them, and his 68 goals in 76 league appearances is a rate that places him among the most prolific forwards in the club’s history. The Ballon d’Or vote, decided by 28 points, will sting. But the history of the award is full of players who used defeat as fuel, and Mbappé’s first outing since the ceremony suggests he intends to do the same.

Bellingham is becoming a Madrid great

Passing Zidane’s goal tally is a milestone that should be celebrated without overstatement. Zidane’s greatness at Madrid was never defined by his goal count, and Bellingham’s game is different in kind. But the fact that a 23-year-old midfielder has reached 50 goals for the club, and done so in 76 fewer appearances than a player widely regarded as one of the finest of his generation, is a measure of how extraordinary Bellingham’s start in Spain has been. His goal at Santander was also a reminder of his versatility: he is equally comfortable arriving late in the box, running beyond a defence or, as in the Clásico, starting the attack that leads to the winning goal. Madrid have had great midfielders before, and Bellingham is still young enough that his legacy is unwritten. But milestones like this one are how legacies are built, one goal at a time, and the 50th arrived in a performance that was, by any measure, complete.

Mourinho’s project has found its spine

When Mourinho was reappointed in the summer, the questions were familiar ones: could a manager whose methods are so often described as pragmatic impose himself on a squad built around attacking talent, and could he do so quickly enough to challenge a Barcelona side that had won the league twice in a row? Five months into the season, the evidence is increasingly positive. Six consecutive wins, a Clásico victory at Camp Nou, and a team that is visibly growing in confidence suggest a project that has found its shape faster than many expected. The emergence of Güler as one of Mourinho’s untouchables is particularly significant. The Turkish playmaker’s pass for Bellingham’s goal was the kind of incisive, defence-splitting delivery that changes games, and his role in the build-up to the Clásico winner showed the same quality. Diomande, too, has become a reliable source of goals from midfield. Around them, Valverde provides the energy, Bellingham the thrust and Mbappé the finish. It is, in short, a team with a clear spine, and a manager who knows exactly what he wants from it.

The off-field storm still matters

It would be wrong to treat Mbappé’s week as a footnote. The apology over the video joking about Mao Zedong, and the decision by Chinese state television to omit Madrid’s match and other Spanish league fixtures from its broadcasts, is a reminder that modern footballers operate in a world where a single social media post can have commercial and diplomatic consequences. Madrid’s response, on the pitch, was to win comfortably. But the episode also illustrates the scrutiny that now attaches to the game’s biggest stars, and the speed with which a sporting story can become something larger. Mbappé handled the week as well as any player could have, answering with a goal and a win. Whether the broadcasting issue resolves itself, and what it means for La Liga’s relationship with its Chinese audience, will be worth watching in the weeks ahead.

What to Watch Next

1. Madrid in Athens: Real Madrid travel to AEK Athens in the Champions League on Wednesday night. Mourinho will have to decide whether to rotate his side with the league race so tight, and whether the momentum of six straight wins is best protected by continuity or by rest.
2. Barcelona against Atlético: Barcelona host Aston Villa in the Champions League on Tuesday before travelling to face Atlético Madrid on Sunday 8 November in a meeting of the top two. The result will either stretch Barcelona’s lead or drag Atlético, and potentially Madrid, right back into the thick of the race.
3. The scoring race: Raphinha leads the La Liga scoring chart with 15 goals, three ahead of Mbappé on 12. With both players in such prolific form, the battle for the Pichichi Trophy may run all season, and it will be shaped by the head-to-head meetings still to come.
4. Bellingham’s next milestone: Having reached 50 goals for Madrid, Bellingham will now be chasing the tallies of the club’s great midfield scorers. His form, and his fitness, will be central to Madrid’s hopes in both La Liga and the Champions League.
5. Racing’s survival fight: Racing Santander remain 16th, and their season will be defined by results against the teams around them rather than against the champions-elect. Their second-half performance against Madrid, and Zabiri’s goals, offer genuine reasons for optimism.

Sources

• TNT Sports — Racing Santander 0-3 Real Madrid: Mbappé, Bellingham and Diomande on target
• The Telegraph Nigeria (AFP) — La Liga: Mbappé scores as Real Madrid beat Racing Santander 3-0
• Yardbarker — Mbappé maintains 100% scoring record in La Liga against Racing Santander
• Opta Analyst — Clásico win, sky-high team spirit, and Real Madrid in the title race: José Mourinho is back
• Fastbreak (Reuters) — Barcelona bounce back with 6-1 win over Alaves