Real Madrid 2026/27: Mourinho, Vinicius and a title race lost by September

Mourinho's Real Madrid sink in September and the dressing room falls apart

A Vinicius goal in the 89th minute cannot hide the obvious: Real Madrid's 2026/27 season has turned the league title into a race they lost before the cold weather even arrived. The defeat that opens this fourth installment of our season coverage leaves behind a phrase that sums up the mood: the league, they say, is over by September. It is not a throwaway chant from the stands. It is the diagnosis running through thousands of messages over forty days, with Mourinho's return as the backdrop and Florentino Pérez in the crosshairs of his own fans.

The pattern repeats itself game after game. The team does not run, does not organize and does not compete until the scoreline is already beyond repair. The comeback always comes too late, with the opponent sitting deep and the clock against them. And when the football finally shows up, so does the feeling that the problem is not tactical but structural.

Vinicius, from savior to scapegoat

The Brazilian's figure concentrates almost all of the anger. He is accused of caring more about his own numbers than the team, of arriving to wreck a dressing room that was working, and of going missing in the big games. His red card for grabbing an opponent by the hair ignites the debate: for some, it is proof that he lacks a competitive brain; for others, yet more evidence that the club has built a project around a player who cannot carry it.

Some go further and argue that his off-field drift — personal crusades, image deals, gestures of support that split the fanbase — has contaminated his performances. The comparison with Cristiano Ronaldo comes up again and again, and never ends well for him.

The dressing room: punches, leaks and a president on the edge of farce

The story of the season cannot be understood without the dressing-room episodes. Players brawling in the car park, others taking swings at teammates and kit men with the excuse that "he's just like that," an incident that ends with a footballer in hospital, and a president more concerned with keeping it out of the press than with what actually peine. Add to that a drink-driving case and a court case that brushes a player, even if only collaterally.

The institution, they say, is in worse shape than the team. And the team is already last on the list of concerns.

Mourinho, the return that fails to fix what it promised to fix

The Portuguese's return was sold as a reality check. The numbers, for now, say otherwise. The defense leaks, the midfield cannot hold onto the ball, and the forwards miss chances they used to bury with their eyes closed. The paradox is cruel: the team's best spells come when Mourinho benches his two supposed talismans.

The debate about the dugout is no longer whether Mourinho survives, but how long it takes Florentino to repeat the usual script: sack the coach so he doesn't have to sack himself.

The transfer bill: 140 million for a ghost

The economic criticism has a name attached. The club, it is said, has spent fortunes on players who do not deliver while letting legends leave over laughably small wage differences. The figures circulating in the conversation are stark: hundreds of millions committed to failed signings, stratospheric contracts for footballers who have not justified even one full season, and a renewal policy that rewards obedience and punishes performance.

The most cited case is that of a center-back who has barely played and who will be remembered, people say with a smirk, for lifting a plastic chair in a celebration. The conclusion is unavoidable: the problem is not just sporting, it is a management model problem.

The referee as an alibi and the zaineira affair as religion

No discussion about Real Madrid closes without the refereeing chapter. Vinicius's red card, the millimetric review of Madrid's goals versus the wide latitude given to rivals, and the feeling that VAR has two different rulebooks all feed the theory of unequal treatment. The Brazilian's four-match ban is read as the minimum punishment needed to avoid stirring up more dust.

The zaineira case (payments by FC Barcelona to the former vice-president of Spain's refereeing committee) hangs over everything. Some argue that the payments to the refereeing ex-vice-president over nearly two decades were not just consultancy work, and that the mismanagement under investigation will eventually splash onto the club that hired him. Others respond that, until there is a verdict, it is all smoke.

The last dance: Florentino, age and a succession that never comes

The title of this installment is no accident. Florentino Pérez is facing what many describe as his final term, with the fanbase split between those who credit him with building the stadium and the most recent trophy haul and those who accuse him of having lost his way. The sale of the club, or at least the entry of outside capital, appears in the conversation as a possible and antiestéticared scenario.

The question hanging over every defeat is not who plays on Sunday. It is who holds power in the boardroom in two years' time, and whether the next project will be built on sporting criteria or on another presidential whim.

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As this installment closes, the team still has not won two games in a row and the fans are still arguing over whether the problem is the coach, the president or the players. It is probably all three at once. The only thing nobody disputes is the fact that opens this coverage: the league was decided in September. And the last dance was still to come.