Mbappe Scores Twice as Real Madrid Win the Clasico at Camp Nou

Kylian Mbappe scored twice as Real Madrid beat Barcelona 2-1 at Camp Nou in the first Clasico of the season.

The win was Jose Mourinho's, thirteen years after he last made a habit of taking points out of this fixture, and it has opened up La Liga.

Two goals and a title race

A Clasico settled by one player is a familiar shape, and it keeps being Mbappe. Two goals away from home in the fixture that defines the Spanish season is the kind of individual return that turns a close league table into a narrative.

What it does to the standings is the more durable point. Barcelona lose ground at home in the match they can least afford to; Madrid take three points and, more usefully, take them in the one game their rivals cannot make up elsewhere.

Mourinho, again

Thirteen years is a long time to carry a reputation for a specific thing, and Mourinho's is for this: arriving at Camp Nou with a plan built to frustrate rather than to outplay, and leaving with the result.

That he has done it again, in a second spell, with a squad built around a forward rather than around a midfield, says something about how portable the approach is. La Liga is heating up, and the manager most associated with making this fixture ugly is back inside it.

Sources: BBC Sport, 26 October 2026, BBC Sport, 26 October 2026