{"id":774083,"date":"2026-09-17T23:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774083\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T23:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:06:17","slug":"carlos-espi-gives-real-madrid-hope-in-the-face-of-barcelonas-la-liga-storm-european-club-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774083\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Esp\u00ed gives Real Madrid hope in the face of Barcelona\u2019s La Liga storm | European club football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jos\u00e9 Mourinho called and Carlos Esp\u00ed came to his side. It was late, it was noisy and it was almost over \u2013 the match and maybe even something more \u2013 when Real Madrid\u2019s coach took the forward who is also his flatmate to one side on Tuesday night. Standing close, Mourinho had a message to deliver; he also had a piece of paper. Small, folded, half-hidden in his hand, it was not big enough for much more than a single word, shown almost surreptitiously, the request written on it, like what he had whispered in Esp\u00ed\u2019s ear, left to your imagination<\/a>. Put ball in goal, perhaps. Or: Help. So he did.<\/p>\n

Madrid needed him to, which they should not have. Two goals up inside half an hour at Elche on Tuesday night, they could have added a third or a fourth, maybe even a fifth, before half-time. But, thinking it was as done as it really should have been, their minds perhaps on Sunday\u2019s derby at Atl\u00e9tico too, they had stopped again, drifting. Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior had gone, Arda Guler had gone, Aur\u00e9lien Tchouam\u00e9ni might as well have done, barely able to move any more, and now, somehow, the game was going. Goals from Abiel Osorio in the 71st minute and Fer Ni\u00f1o in the 83rd had made it 2-2.<\/p>\n

Fer Ni\u00f1o scored the equaliser for Elche to make it 2-2 against Real Madrid in the 83rd minute. Photograph: Kai Forsterling\/EPA<\/p>\n

Antonio R\u00fcdiger was parading the touchline, hands on his head, wearing a look that said: wait, what?! And, control long since lost, the ball not theirs, it could still get worse: somewhere in the notebook, amid all the arrows and the scrawls no one can make sense of, the last, barely decipherable scribble said<\/a>: \u201c88. Elche are going for the winner too!\u201d All around the Mart\u00ednez Valero a chant went round: Yes, we can! They had more possession and as many shots on target, had deserved to draw level and maybe even to lead after a second half they had dominated, and genuinely thought they could too. Which was of course their first mistake, the hope what killed them.<\/p>\n

With crushing inevitability, the next note says something about Esp\u00ed and just wide, the one after says 4\u2019 and the one after that just ESP\u00cd. A step forward, the whole Elche line following to their inevitable demise, and there was the space. On as a substitute, rested to begin with, Jude Bellingham\u2019s superb run and pass released Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 who laid off for Esp\u00ed to score, staff and subs, dressed in pink, racing down the touchline. He had only gone and done it again. It had been 11.16pm, the 88th minute, when Mourinho slipped him that note; it was 11.21pm when he stood in the corner, pumping his fists. On the pitch four minutes, the 21-year-old who scored an injury-time winner on the opening weekend<\/a>, had saved them.<\/p>\n

Born in Tavernes, a little way up the east coast from Elche, his family waiting for him at the side of the pitch after the match on Tuesday night, no one had heard of Esp\u00ed this time last year. By then the end of the year, there was a case to say that he was the single most important player in Spain last season but even then, even when Madrid paid his buyout clause, he wasn\u2019t exactly famous. The day he scored against Espanyol in the first week of the season, his Wikipedia page was the most read in the whole country. One detail not on there is that he is a trained oboe player.<\/p>\n

That night at Cornella he saved Madrid, like he had saved Levante. No one had an impact on a team like he had on them, scoring 11 goals in 25 games to rescue them for relegation. Maybe saving teams is just what he does. Big strong, a traditional No 9, who does not mind mixing it with centre-backs \u2013 Thibaut Courtois called him a \u201cbeast\u201d for going into battle with R\u00fcdiger in training. At Madrid, teammates have taken to calling him Joselu Junior. He has scored twice in 42 minutes, delivering four points already. No one at the club has a better ratio.<\/p>\n

Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 assisted Carlos Esp\u00ed\u2019s winning goal. Photograph: Kai Forsterling\/EPA<\/p>\n

This was huge, not just about Tuesday night. Matchday six, a full round of midweek matches, has not finished yet. La Liga did the worst first \u2013 Real Sociedad and Celta played out a 0-0 draw two weeks ago \u2013 and left the best for last. Betis and Villarreal, the two teams Lamine Yamal says he likes watching the most \u2013 if only because he is usually too busy to be in front of the telly when Barcelona<\/a> play \u2013 are both in action on Thursday. But plenty has already happened and something amazing did not: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang did not score, for the first time. As for Levante and Athletic, they did not even play, although they did turn up and, amid the biblical storm and safety alerts, the league did not actually announce it was off until five minutes after it was due to start and long after the referee had taken one look at the knee-high lake at the end of the tunnel and declared it \u201creckless\u201d to even get to the pitch, let alone play.<\/p>\n

This was the week in which Rayo finally played the last of their unexpectedly successful but ultimately empty games in exile at L\u00e9ganes, leaving the balance at Butarque: three matches, two wins, one draw, thousands of unoccupied seats and something (else) broken for ever. In which Atl\u00e9tico put four past Osasuna. In which Valencia, under new caretaker management, won for the first time and scored for just the second. And in which Sevilla \u2013 Sevilla! \u2013 went fourth, a third of the points needed for survival already secure and never to be taken from them. It was also the week in which Atl\u00e9tico scored four, and Barcelona scored <\/a>seven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Quick GuideLa Liga matchday six resultsShow<\/p>\n

Real Sociedad 0-0 Celta (played on 3 September),\u00a0Rayo 2-1 Espanyol, Alaves 0-1 Valencia, Elche 2-3 Real Madrid, Atl\u00e9tico 4-0 Osasuna, Deportivo 0-1 Sevilla, Barcelona 7-2 Racing. Thursday: Betis v Getafe, Malaga v Villarreal.<\/p>\n

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At the end of the match at the Camp Nou the thunder and lightning also came rolling in, if not quite as violently as at Levante, and delivered every headline writer\u2019s dream \u2013 Barcelona are the storm, said AS, while El Mundo Deportivo went for \u201ctorrential football\u201d \u2013 tragically, no one went for liquid football. The Racing Santander midfielder Sergio Canales described his opponents as \u201cmadness\u201d. You do not even have to know about football to see it, he said, which is handy: \u201cBarcelona have it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On a night when they had Jo\u00e3o Cancelo scoring two belters, Karim Adeyemi channeling Pel\u00e9 and Gabriel Jesus curling in a gorgeous first goal for the club. Barcelona gave Racing a chance, sending on Wojciech Szczesny, and still did not give them a chance. They scored seven and could have scored 17. Lamine Yamal only scored one; he also had one disallowed, hit the post, and missed a penalty.<\/p>\n

They also have Raphinha. And while everyone goes on about Lamine Yamal and Mbapp\u00e9 and the Ballon d\u2019Or and Hansi Flick goes on about how he will be happy when the bloody thing is over, Raphinha, who was not even nominated, quietly goes about showing that right now he is better than both of them \u2013 and anyone else in fact. The man who is just filling in at No 9 has 11 goals already this season, a start so good only two men have ever done it before: Lionel Messi and Brazil forward Ronaldo. With seven wins from seven competitive games, this is Barcelona\u2019s best-ever start. They scored two against the man who in the summer conceded just one in eight World Cup games. In their other six matches they have scored: five, five, five, five, four and seven. They have won every league match.<\/p>\n

Raphinha poses like Spider-Man to celebrate his hat-trick against Racing. Photograph: Joan Monfort\/AP<\/p>\n

Which is why Madrid needed Esp\u00ed so badly on Tuesday night. Already defeated at Betis \u2013 where Esp\u00ed came on and scored an outrageous volley that would have been the winner, only for it to be ruled out \u2013 Madrid faced the prospect of dropping points again. Still not entirely convincing, they had let another team back into the game \u2013 last weekend, Rayo too should have finished off but were suddenly alive. Madrid have \u201clost\u201d three of the last four second halves \u2013 and, with two minutes left, faced the prospect of slipping five points behind Barcelona \u2026 with the derby to come this weekend. Of course, it would not have been over: there are still 32 weeks left and Billie Joe Armstrong\u2019s mum hasn\u2019t even sneaked into his room yet. But this is not a Barcelona team that looks likely to allow many second chances and five points would have been a significant gap even at this stage. But then Esp\u00ed did it again.<\/p>\n

After that win at Espanyol on the opening day, the first time their new striker saved them, Mourinho said that he and Esp\u00ed lived together at the club\u2019s Valdebebas training ground: the two of them, the coaching staff and Marc Cucurella, like the characters in some heartwarming sitcom, a bunch of flatmates thrown together and making it work somehow. \u201cEsp\u00ed\u2019s a funny kid,\u201d Mourinho said; he\u2019s also one he can call on when you need him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Mourinho called and Carlos Esp\u00ed came to his side. It was late, it was noisy and it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-774083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}