Real Madrid lost their first game of the 2026/27 La Liga season on Friday night, falling 1-0 to Real Betis. And whlie Jose Mourinho can sit there and talk about how Madrid deserved to win and actually played well, Madridistas know that when you lose without scoring a single goal in a La Liga game with that crest on your chest, then you had a pathetic afternoon at the office.
And no single player cost the team more than Kylian Mbappe. Although half the world was fawning over Mbappe for all of his goals at the 2026 World Cup, the reality is that France fell short of their goal of winning the tournament once more. While Mbappe scored goals against the mediocre teams, he was totally shut down by Spain in the semifinals.
It is hard to rely on Mbappe when he goes hot and cold, bagging hat tricks against Real Sociedad and then pulling a blank vs. Real Betis despite getting so many clear shots on goal fed to him by Vinicius Junior, Jude Bellingham, and Arda Guler.
Kylian Mbappe is not taking advantage of his chances
Mbappe missed everything and still could have saved Real Madrid from the penalty spot, but he looked incompetent from eleven meters, stutter stepping like Simone Zaza before telegraphing an awful penalty at mid level so that the on fire Betis keeper could parry.
You would never, ever see Mbappe's idol Cristiano Ronaldo shoot a penalty like that with stutter stepping, no venom, and no directness. You would never see Ronaldo in his prime at Real Madrid squandering that many clear chances to win a game against a team that, in comparison to Madrid, should be nothing but a minnow.
Kylian Mbappe is not someone Real Madrid can look to as an example or a true titan of the game who pulls the team up to being the best, which is exactly who Ronaldo was. In the prime years of his career now, the excuses for Mbappe fulfilling the potential he always billed himself as - the next Cristiano Ronaldo - have run dry.
Real Madrid need Mbappe to start stepping up each and every week, because that's what helped make Cristiano a record breaker and so unique to everyone else in Madrid history. He brought his A plus game every single week and scored, burying the "give me" chances. And in his third season in the capital, Mbappe still can't even do that.
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