Real Madrid needed rescuing again, and again it was Carlos Espí who did it. Two goals up inside half an hour at Elche on Tuesday night, José Mourinho’s side let the game slip, conceded twice, and turned to a substitute who had been on the pitch for four minutes to save them.
There should have been no drama at all. Madrid could have added a third, a fourth, maybe even a fifth before half-time, but, believing the job as good as done — and perhaps with Sunday’s derby at Atlético on their minds — they stopped. Vinícius Júnior had gone, Arda Guler had gone, Aurélien Tchouaméni could barely move, and the game went with them. Abiel Osorio made it 2-1 in the 71st minute, Fer Niño made it 2-2 in the 83rd, and Antonio Rüdiger was left parading the touchline with his hands on his head. Elche had more possession and as many shots on target, had dominated the second half, and thought they could win it, which was their first mistake.
It was late, it was noisy and it was almost over when Mourinho took the forward who is also his flatmate to one side. He had a message, and he also had a piece of paper: small, folded, half-hidden in his hand, too small for much more than a single word, shown almost surreptitiously. What was written on it, like what he whispered in Espí’s ear, has been left to the imagination. It was 11.16pm, the 88th minute, when the note was slipped over. By 11.21pm Espí was standing in the corner, pumping his fists.
Elche had pushed on looking for the winner, the whole defensive line following them up, and the space appeared. Jude Bellingham’s run and pass released Kylian Mbappé, who laid the ball off for Espí to score. Staff and substitutes, dressed in pink, raced down the touchline. It was his second goal of the season, scored in only 42 minutes of football, a return that has already delivered four points and a ratio no one else at the club can match.
Espí was born in Tavernes, a little way up the east coast from Elche, and his family were waiting for him at the side of the pitch after the match. A year ago nobody had heard of him. By the end of last season there was a case to be made that he was the single most important player in Spain, having scored 11 goals in 25 games to drag Levante away from relegation, and Madrid paid his buyout clause. He announced himself with an injury-time winner at Espanyol on the opening weekend; the day he scored it, his Wikipedia page was the most read in the whole country. One detail that page does not carry is that he is a trained oboe player.
Big and strong, a traditional No 9 who does not mind mixing it with centre-backs, he has been nicknamed Joselu Junior by his teammates, while Thibaut Courtois called him a “beast” for going into battle with Rüdiger in training. He has scored twice in four matches, and maybe saving teams is just what he does.
The reason it mattered so much is Barcelona, who have spent the opening weeks racking up seven-goal thrillers. They put seven past Racing at the Camp Nou in a 7-2 win, with João Cancelo scoring two, Karim Adeyemi and Gabriel Jesus also on target. Lamine Yamal scored one, had another disallowed, hit the post and missed a penalty, and sending on Wojciech Szczesny changed nothing. Racing’s Sergio Canales called his opponents “madness” — “Barcelona have it all” — and it is hard to argue. Seven wins from seven competitive games is the club’s best-ever start; in their other six matches they have scored five, five, five, five, four and seven. Raphinha, who was not even nominated for the Ballon d’Or, is filling in at No 9 and already has 11 goals, a start matched only by Lionel Messi and Brazil’s Ronaldo.
That is why Madrid needed Espí so badly. They had already been beaten at Betis, where he came on and scored a volley that would have been the winner only for it to be ruled out, and they have “lost” three of the last four second halves. With two minutes left at Elche they faced slipping five points behind Barcelona with the derby at Atlético to come this weekend. There are still 32 weeks left, but this is not a Barcelona side that looks likely to offer many second chances.
The midweek round is not finished yet: Betis and Villarreal — the two teams Lamine Yamal says he most enjoys watching — play on Thursday. Already Atlético have put four past Osasuna, Valencia won for the first time, and scored for only the second, under new caretaker management, and Sevilla went fourth. Rayo played the last of their games in exile at Léganes, leaving their record at Butarque at three matches, two wins and one draw. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang did not score, for the first time. Levante and Athletic did not play at all: the league did not announce the postponement until five minutes after kick-off was due, long after the referee had taken one look at the knee-high lake at the end of the tunnel and called it reckless.
After that opening-day win at Espanyol, Mourinho revealed that he and Espí live together at the club’s Valdebebas training ground — the two of them, the coaching staff and Marc Cucurella, a set of flatmates thrown together and somehow making it work. “Espí’s a funny kid,” Mourinho said. He is also one the coach can call on when he needs him, and on Tuesday night he answered.