Real Madrid: derby defeat leaves Jose Mourinho six points adrift

Real Madrid go into the next round of fixtures six points off top spot after a derby defeat to Atletico Madrid that turned on a VAR red card. Dean Huijsen’s dismissal for pulling back Giuliano Simeone gave Atletico the platform to win, and Jose Mourinho’s side now sit one point behind their neighbours too.

Key derby takeaways

• Atletico Madrid beat Real Madrid to move into second place in La Liga, one point above Mourinho’s men.
• Real Madrid are six points behind leaders Barcelona after the loss.
• Dean Huijsen was sent off following a VAR review, and Alejandro Grimaldo converted the resulting penalty.

Those three numbers, six points, one point and one red card, tell most of the story. Our full report on the derby carries the minute by minute detail, but the table now makes uncomfortable reading for a club that spent much of August as favourites.

Real Madrid: how it happened

Huijsen’s afternoon ended when VAR intervened for a foul on Giuliano Simeone, and the referee reversed his original call to show a straight red. Grimaldo stepped up and sent the goalkeeper the wrong way to open the scoring from the spot.

Real Madrid’s task got harder soon after. Jonathan David turned in Simeone’s cross for his third goal in three La Liga appearances, a run of form that has quietly become one of the division’s better subplots this month.

There was a let-off at the other end when Cristian Romero avoided a second yellow, and a red, after another VAR review for a foul on Jude Bellingham. Had that decision gone the other way, ten against ten might have changed the shape of the closing stages entirely.

Antonio Rudiger gave Real Madrid something to take from the afternoon, heading in from Bernardo Silva’s free-kick late on. It was a consolation rather than a turning point; Atletico saw out the win comfortably enough. Julian Alvarez, who tried to engineer a summer move to Barcelona, came off the bench to some boos from the home end, a reminder that not every subplot in this derby belonged to the scoreline.

The expert angle: six-point gap exposes second-half slip

Mourinho won all six La Liga derbies against Atletico during his first spell in charge between 2010 and 2013. That record made him close to untouchable in this fixture once, and it is exactly why Sunday’s defeat cuts as deep as it does among supporters who remember those years.

This is not an isolated collapse. We have already examined four straight second-half slumps, a pattern of Real Madrid fading after the break in recent weeks, and the derby fits that trend rather than breaking it. Huijsen’s red card accelerated the process here, but the underlying issue, a team that starts games well and cannot see them out, was already visible before Atletico ever took the lead.

Barcelona have made the most of it. A six-point cushion at the top is not decisive in late September, but it does remove any margin for further slips. Atletico’s win also means Real Madrid have now lost ground to both direct rivals in the space of one afternoon, a rare double blow this early in the campaign.

Independent match coverage broadly supports that reading of the game. The derby coverage published elsewhere singles out the same passage of play, Huijsen’s dismissal followed swiftly by Grimaldo’s penalty, as the moment the contest tipped away from Real Madrid.

What happens next

Mourinho now has a squad to rebuild around a missing centre-back and a points gap to close. Huijsen’s suspension leaves a hole in defence at exactly the moment Real Madrid can least afford one, with Barcelona showing no sign of slowing down.

The warning signs were already there before this defeat. We covered the recent Elche scare, another game Real Madrid should have controlled but nearly let slip, and the derby loss extends that run of games where control has not translated into results.

For Mourinho personally, the derby record he built between 2010 and 2013 is now history rather than a current streak. Six points off top spot with the season still young is recoverable. Whether his side can find the second-half discipline that has been missing in four straight matches is the question that will decide how recoverable it actually is.

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