After looking over the precipice in Rome, after days of chewing doubts and fog, Real Madrid found a night of calm and happiness at home with a team guided by Güler's ingenuity. Suddenly, he discovered something that seemed obvious: the power to dictate the rules using the ball, building around it to exploit the vertigo of Mbappé and Diomande. Mourinho's team thus disarmed a Sevilla team that had been riding on solidity and reduced it to a goal. Thus began an eight-day stretch that began with this League match after the shock in Rome, with Vinicius suspended, and before visiting the launched Barcelona on Sunday at the Camp Nou. There can also be peace at the Bernabéu. Although by different routes than those they frequented.
In some way, Mourinho had been anticipating the eleven. The ingredients had appeared at the end of the last games. Although the Portuguese assured in Rome, after the comeback of three goals in seven minutes, that if they had started as they finished they would have scored five (those who started received three). And yet, there was Güler in the center with Tchouameni to add some meaning, and Valverde on the right side despite the fact that neither Trent nor Dumfries, hires from the last two summers, were prevented from playing. The only thing was that Mourinho preferred the Uruguayan. More than enough. From the final madness of the Olympic in Rome he also recovered Endrick, who had lived on the margins, and gave him the right wing.
It is true that Sevilla does not have the persecutory waste of Gasperini's Roma, but it is a solid, intense, supportive and very well-armed team, which has competed above expectations taking into account the years it came from. Not five were seen against Madrid, nor did the development resemble that of four days before. Real did not appear as a reactive team focused on damage control and avoiding problems when moving through the middle. It was quite the opposite. The control he sought was not to prevent the opponent from doing too much with the ball, but to dominate him from it, with Güler hyperactive in the center.
The Turk's momentum encouraged Bellingham, who joined the distribution without getting involved in laps and laps of driving. He left the dribbles closer to the baseline. The Englishman came to help, received and released. They gathered more and more on Diomande's side, where Mbappé and Cucurella also appeared.
Counterattacks also flowed more, between Güler's long-beam vision and the accuracy of his left foot, and Bellingham's accelerations. In one of those stampedes, the Englishman found Diomande with a field ahead of him, the Ivorian left Güler behind and the Turk hooked her to the corner as he arrived. No preliminaries.
He spent almost everything on the left, but Madrid also threatened the occasions when he looked the other way. Valverde's journey through that corridor is extraordinary. When he looks at his goal and when he points at the opponent. Güler sent him a filtered pass that the Uruguayan continued towards the area but which Mbappé could not take advantage of. But he also propelled Endrick, who took off at the slightest moment towards Vlahodimos.
Real managed to anesthetize Sevilla by denying them the ball; don't space it. And Luis García Plaza's team has the skills to take control, with the foot of Peque and the support of Fofana and Agoumé, who even forced Courtois to stretch to the stump of his right stick to block with his glove. Between the Belgian goalkeeper and a very committed defensive exercise, also by Diomande and Endrick, Madrid was deactivating the sections in which Sevilla organized itself around the ball and searched the area from the wings.
Mourinho's squad moved with a different, sharper rhythm. Bellingham left Mbappé with a backheel on a ball he received from Diomande and the Frenchman dazzled with a prodigious maneuver: a control while turning that he linked with a forward touch with his left foot and a cut to the goalkeeper, tac-tac, right and goal with his left.
Mbappé works better at full speed. Like when he chased a pass behind Diomande's back. He flew to get in front of Castrín, fell in the area and the referee awarded him a penalty that Panenka scored.
Sevilla did not let go. García Plaza introduced Ejuke and Stassin, two attackers, and Manu Bueno, who reduced the distance. The Andalusian team pressed high, stole and the youth player beat Courtois from below.
But this more armed version of Madrid did not feel disturbed by the blow. Diomande took off once again, crossed into the area and struck the net to score the fourth, his second goal in Madrid, a reward on the first day without Vinicius.
There the gas that Sevilla had left disappeared. So much so that Mourinho took advantage of the night's decline to get Militao back to play six months after his operation. Finally a night of peace at the Bernabéu, some order, a plan, ideas, football and goals. Real looks at Sunday's classic with another face, with a previous stop on Wednesday in the Champions League against RB Leipzig again at home.
