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José Mourinho called and Carlos Espí came to his side. It was late, it was noisy and it was almost over – the match and maybe even something more – when Real Madrid’s coach took the forward who is also his flatmate to one side on Tuesday night. Standing close, Mourinho had a message to deliver; he also had a piece of paper. Small, folded, half-hidden in his hand, it was not big enough for much more than a single word, shown almost surreptitiously, the request written on it, like what he had whispered in Espí’s ear, left to your imagination. Put ball in goal, perhaps. Or: Help. So he did.
Madrid needed him to, which they should not have. Two goals up inside half an hour at Elche on Tuesday night, they could have added a third or a fourth, maybe even a fifth, before half-time. But, thinking it was as done as it really should have been, their minds perhaps on Sunday’s derby at Atlético too, they had stopped again, drifting. Vinícius Júnior had gone, Arda Guler had gone, Aurélien Tchouaméni might as well have done, barely able to move any more, and now, somehow, the game was going. Goals from Abiel Osorio in the 71st minute and Fer Niño in the 83rd had made it 2-2.
Antonio Rüdiger was parading the touchline, hands on his head, wearing a look that said: wait, what?! And, control long since lost, the ball not theirs, it could still get worse: somewhere in the notebook, amid all the arrows and the scrawls no one can make sense of, the last, barely decipherable scribble said: “88. Elche are going for the winner too!” All around the Martinez Valero a chant went round: Yes, we can! They had more possession and as many shots on target, had deserved to draw level and maybe even to lead after a second half they had dominated, and genuinely thought they could too. Which was of course their first mistake, the hope what killed them.
With crushing inevitability, the next note says something about Espí and just wide, the one after says 4’ and the one after that just ESPÍ. A step forward, the whole Elche line following to their inevitable demise, and there was the space. On as a substitute, rested to begin with, Jude Bellingham’s superb run and pass released Kylian Mbappé who laid off for Espí to score, staff and subs, dressed in pink, racing down the touchline. He had only gone and done it again. It had been 11.16pm, the 88th minute, when Mourinho slipped him that note; it was 11.21pm when he stood in the corner, pumping his fists. On the pitch four minutes, the 21-year-old who scored an injury-time winner on the opening weekend, had saved them.
Born in Tavernes, a little way up the east coast from Elche, his family waiting for him at the side of the pitch after the match on Tuesday night, no one had heard of Espí this time last year. By then the end of the year, there was a case to say that he was the single most important player in Spain last season but even then, even when Madrid paid his buyout clause, he wasn’t exactly famous. The day he scored against Espanyol in the first week of the season, his Wikipedia page was the most read in the whole country. One detail not on there is that he is a trained oboe player.
That night at Cornella he saved Madrid, like he had saved Levante. No one had an impact on a team like he had on them, scoring 11 goals in 25 games to rescue them for relegation. Maybe saving teams is just what he does. Big strong, a traditional No 9, who does not mind mixing it with centre-backs – Thibaut Courtois called him a “beast” for going into battle with Rüdiger in training. At Madrid, teammates have taken to calling him Joselu Junior. He has scored twice in 42 minutes, delivering four points already. No one at the club has a better ratio.
This was huge, not just about Tuesday night. Matchday six, a full round of midweek matches, has not finished yet. La Liga did the worst first – Real Sociedad and Celta played out a 0-0 draw two weeks ago – and left the best for last. Betis and Villarreal, the two teams Lamine Yamal says he likes watching the most – if only because he is usually too busy to be in front of the telly when Barcelona play – are both in action on Thursday. But plenty has already happened and something amazing did not: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang did not score, for the first time. As for Levante and Athletic, they did not even play, although they did turn up and, amid the biblical storm and safety alerts, the league did not actually announce it was off until five minutes after it was due to start and long after the referee had taken one look at the knee-high lake at the end of the tunnel and declared it “reckless” to even get to the pitch, let alone play.
This was the week in which Rayo finally played the last of their unexpectedly successful but ultimately empty games in exile at Léganes, leaving the balance at Butarque: three matches, two wins, one draw, thousands of unoccupied seats and something (else) broken for ever. In which Atlético put four past Osasuna. In which Valencia, under new caretaker management, won for the first time and scored for just the second. And in which Sevilla – Sevilla! – went fourth, a third of the points needed for survival already secure and never to be taken from them. It was also the week in which Atlético scored four, and Barcelona scored seven.
La Liga matchday six results
ShowReal Sociedad 0-0 Celta (played on 3 September), Rayo 2-1 Espanyol, Alaves 0-1 Valencia, Elche 2-3 Real Madrid, Atlético 4-0 Osasuna, Deportivo 0-1 Sevilla, Barcelona 7-2 Racing. Thursday: Betis v Getafe, Malaga v Villarreal.
At the end of the match at the Camp Nou the thunder and lightning also came rolling in, if not quite as violently as at Levante, and delivered every headline writer’s dream – Barcelona are the storm, said AS, while El Mundo Deportivo went for “torrential football” – tragically, no one went for liquid football. The Racing Santander midfielder Sergio Canales described his opponents as “madness”. You do not even have to know about football to see it, he said, which is handy: “Barcelona have it all.”
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On a night when they had João Cancelo scoring two belters, Karim Adeyemi channeling Pelé and Gabriel Jesus curling in a gorgeous first goal for the club. Barcelona gave Racing a chance, sending on Wojciech Szczesny, and still did not give them a chance. They scored seven and could have scored 17. Lamine Yamal only scored one; he also had one disallowed, hit the post, and missed a penalty.
They also have Raphinha. And while everyone goes on about Lamine Yamal and Mbappé and the Ballon d’Or and Hansi Flick goes on about how he will be happy when the bloody thing is over, Raphinha, who was not even nominated, quietly goes about showing that right now he is better than both of them – and anyone else in fact. The man who is just filling in at No 9 has 11 goals already this season, a start so good only two men have ever done it before: Lionel Messi and Brazil forward Ronaldo. With seven wins from seven competitive games, this is Barcelona’s best-ever start. They scored two against the man who in the summer conceded just one in eight World Cup games. In their other six matches they have scored: five, five, five, five, four and seven. They have won every league match.
Which is why Madrid needed Espí so badly on Tuesday night. Already defeated at Betis – where Espí came on and scored an outrageous volley that would have been the winner, only for it to be ruled out – Madrid faced the prospect of dropping points again. Still not entirely convincing, they had let another team back into the game – last weekend, Rayo too should have finished off but were suddenly alive. Madrid have “lost” three of the last four second halves – and, with two minutes left, faced the prospect of slipping five points behind Barcelona … with the derby to come this weekend. Of course, it would not have been over: there are still 32 weeks left and Billie Joe Armstrong’s mum hasn’t even sneaked into his room yet. But this is not a Barcelona team that looks likely to allow many second chances and five points would have been a significant gap even at this stage. But then Espí did it again.
After that win at Espanyol on the opening day, the first time their new striker saved them, Mourinho said that he and Espí lived together at the club’s Valdebebas training ground: the two of them, the coaching staff and Marc Cucurella, like the characters in some heartwarming sitcom, a bunch of flatmates thrown together and making it work somehow. “Espí’s a funny kid,” Mourinho said; he’s also one he can call on when you need him.
