\n<\/p>\n
Vinicius Jr bagged a brace, Jude Bellingham provided a lovely assist, and Real Madrid strolled to a convincing 2-0 win over Espanyol on Sunday evening. Madrid got things done without Kylian Mbappe, and Alvaro Arbeloa will be pleased with the performance – but with the knowledge that their win only delays Barcelona’s inevitable march to the league title.<\/p>\n
It was a back-and-forth affair early on. Espanyol hadn’t won a game in 2026, and played like they intended to end that streak. Twice they threatened, but neither opening quite came off. Madrid responded, though. Vini Jr, dangerous all night, hit the post after some tidy setup play from Trent Alexander-Arnold. It was otherwise a rather drab first half, with chances coming at a premium.<\/span><\/p>\n Los Blancos emerged with a bit more conviction after the break, though. Vinicius got his moment 10 minutes in, and it had been coming. The Brazilian cut onto his right foot, sent two defenders sliding, and tucked the ball inside the near post for a 1-0 lead. The second was even better. Bellingham backheeled to the Brazilian, who simply stroked it into the top corner. <\/span><\/p>\n Madrid had futher chances. Gonzalo Garcia, who made a real impact off the bench, fired wide. Vinicius came close once or twice. Bellingham had a shot well stopped. It really should have been four or five. But Madrid settled for two. There is relief in a win, for sure, but they could now lose the title in El Clasico next Sunday if they fail to win. It’s hard to imagine a worse fate. <\/span><\/p>\n GOAL<\/strong><\/b> rates Real Madrid’s players from RCDE Stadium…<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vinicius Jr bagged a brace, Jude Bellingham provided a lovely assist, and Real Madrid strolled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}