Mourinho's Real Madrid Limps Toward the Clasico: Vinicius Without a Goal, a Shaky Defense and a Restless Bernabeu

Six points. That's the gap separating Real Madrid from league leaders Barcelona after just seven rounds of LaLiga. And before the calendar even reaches the Clasico on October 25 at Camp Nou, Jose Mourinho's side has four fixtures that could shape the entire season. The mood, there's no denying it, is tense.

Meanwhile, Kylian Mbappe seems to be marching to his own beat. On Sunday he posted a video on social media of himself smiling, pedaling through the countryside. Nothing serious, except for one detail: ten days earlier, Mourinho had used cycling as his go-to example of what a footballer shouldn't do.

"You can't ride a bike. You fall and you might miss three games, or worse, you break a leg... There are a lot of things you have to give up to be a footballer"Jose Mourinho

A slip? A coincidence? A message with a hidden meaning? We'll have to wait until Friday, when Mourinho speaks ahead of the match against Villarreal, to find out whether the episode causes any fallout.

Vinicius, in search of his best form

The most alarming number from the start of the season has a name attached to it: Vinicius Junior has scored just one goal in eight games, a point-blank finish against Real Sociedad on August 26. His expected goals numbers are alarmingly low: 0.04 against Espanyol, 0.04 against Malaga, 0.1 against Inter, 0.15 against Rayo Vallecano and 0.06 against Atletico. It's not just that he isn't scoring, it's that he's barely generating danger at all. Mourinho has come to his defense, asking for patience:

"Physically he's better than ever; he just needs a millimeter to reach his top speed. Mentally he's very strong... Right now it's about delivering assists and understanding the defensive side of the game; the goals will come"Jose Mourinho

Since he said that, after the match against Rayo, Vinicius hasn't scored or assisted again. In the loss to Atletico he touched just 22 balls, the lowest figure on the entire field except for one opposing player, and he was substituted with the team down to ten men. The context matters here: he's under contract until 2032, and Mourinho knows he can't afford to sideline him the way Xabi Alonso did last season.

A defense that keeps springing leaks

Through eight rounds, Madrid has kept a clean sheet just once: a 4-0 win over Malaga, a team that has scored only three goals all season. The rest has been a struggle: a last-gasp goal from Carlos Espi in the 90th minute to win 2-1 over Espanyol, another of his in stoppage time to seal a 3-2 win over Elche after conceding twice in 12 minutes. Against Atletico, Dean Huijsen's red card and the resulting penalty exposed the left flank, exactly where Vinicius and Cucurella operate, something Diego Simeone himself admitted he had targeted on purpose. The club spent nearly 200 million euros over two summers reinforcing that line (Cucurella, Konate and Dumfries this year; Huijsen, Carreras and Alexander-Arnold the year before), but the improvement still hasn't shown up. Mourinho, for his part, insists the problem lies further up the field:

"In games that look settled, we get three, four or five chances to finish them off and we don't take them. When it looks easy... they score a goal and the game opens back up. The positive thing is that, in the face of adversity, the team responds"Jose Mourinho

Refereeing as a recurring enemy

It's no surprise to anyone who knows him that Mourinho complains about refereeing decisions. What's striking is how quickly his rhetoric has drifted toward the conspiratorial. After the derby, holding printed photos for the press conference, he pointed straight at referee Ortiz Arias:

"The poor man couldn't handle the pressure. Congratulations to the CTA... I thought I'd find a different league than the one I left, but they told me otherwise"Jose Mourinho

The Technical Committee of Referees itself partly agreed with him, acknowledging that Ortiz Arias should have sent off Kang-In Lee for the foul on Valverde. But the evidence didn't always back up his complaints: after Mbappe's missed penalty against Betis, he accused the VAR official of "not knowing the rules" for not allowing a retake; the CTA later confirmed that, under IFAB regulations, there had been no encroachment into the area by Bartra. The VAR had not made a mistake.

A fan base that's run out of patience

Two seasons without a major title take their toll, and the Bernabeu is showing it with increasingly frequent whistles, even directed at Vinicius and Mbappe. Mourinho's return, 13 years later, was supposed to give the team some breathing room. It hasn't worked out that way: in the 2-1 win over Inter, both players were booed when they were substituted, despite the result being a win over the reigning European champions. Mbappe, with seven goals this league season after 25 and 31 in the previous two campaigns, remains a guaranteed goal threat, but his image off the field (a yacht vacation while recovering from injury, a night out in Paris after getting hurt on international duty) doesn't help keep the stands patient. If even he can't earn the Bernabeu's unconditional support, it's worth asking how much slack is left for the rest of the squad. The upcoming matches, before the Clasico arrives, will show whether Mourinho finds the answers the club expected from his return, or whether the project starts cracking before its time.