Despite being torn apart by Atletico Madrid for the first 45 minutes at the Wanda Metropolitano, Atleti’s missed opportunities combined with Real Madrid’s incredible finishing from superstars Kylian Mbappe and Arda Guler meant that Real actually held the 2-1 lead heading into half time.
However, it all fell apart for Real Madrid in the second half, as they surrendered four unanswered goals to lose their first game of the 2025/26 La Liga season, falling to Atletico Madrid for the first time in years.
Atleti’s 5-2 win was the result of suffocating second half defense and clear superiority on set pieces, as Real Madrid manager Xabi Alonso clearly didn’t do his homework on how to stop Atleti on corner kicks, knowing full well that Real have been horrible in this area for years.
It was an embarrassing result for Real Madrid, and while the win means more to Atletico in terms of asserting themselves as title contenders after a terrible start to the season than it is an indictment on Los Blancos as a team, it is a reminder that all is not rosy at the Santiago Bernabeu one season after going trophyless.
Real Madrid had enjoyed a strong start to the season with nothing less than victories through the first six Matchdays of the campaign, but now this loss gives eternal rivals FC Barcelona the chance to go top of the table with a win over Real Sociedad on Sunday.
Here are the player ratings for every Real Madrid starter from the matchup against crosstown rivals Atletico Madrid at the Wanda, as Los Rojiblancos routed them 5-2.
GK Thibaut Courtois
Thibaut Courtois could have positioned himself better on the free kick Julian Alvarez scored in the second half that effectively sealed the game, but even then, the free kick was wonderfully hit and Courtois got a hand to the ball when most goalkeepers would not have come anywhere close.
Without Courtois, this game would have been a 7-2 route, as he made multiple incredible saves in one-on-ones by putting his body on the line and making himself big.
From that perspective, Courtois deserves additional praise, too, because he actually made a mistake in the early minutes that went unpunished. He was too slow to get off his line, glued to the goal line as Alexander Sorloth came barreling in, but Eder Militao made an incredible last-ditch tackle to save the day.
Since that early mistake, Courtois never wavered on his line, and that helped lead to several important saves that kept Real Madrid closer to Atletico Madrid than they honestly deserved to be.
Rating: 7.0
LB Alvaro Carreras
The worst player on the pitch, Alvaro Carreras clearly did not look well-suited to the derby, but, surely, the young left back will get better, as El Derbi is an entirely different beast than anything he has been exposed to in his young career, even at Benfica.
Carreras was woeful on the ball and off it. He constantly got outsmarted by the Atleti attackers, playing them onsides or simply losing track of them entirely. On the ball, he looked like he was seeing ghosts, and even Fran Garcia would have done a better job of getting out of danger in his own half.
There’s no question that Carreras cost the team and looked like an amateur. He’s had a great start to the season otherwise and established himself as the starter over Fran already, but Derbis tend to clue Madridistas in to who is really at the level of the club. Carreras has a lot to prove.
Rating: 1.0
CB Dean Huijsen
Dean Huijsen was nearly equally bad, but he made fewer direct errors and was arguably influenced negatively by the sheer number of times Carreras lost track of his marker, especially in the box.
Still, Huijsen is pretty much in the same bracket as Carreras. He’s a young defender who showed his inexperience in truly elite matchups – he came from Bournemouth, after all – as he looked nowhere near the quality of the derby and couldn’t cope defensively.
The Spanish international completed only 82 percent of his passes, and several of those completions actually flatter him, as they were poor passes into traffic that put his midfielders in danger of losing possession.
Huijsen floundered in the air defensively, he looked weak in the tackle (literally making zero tackles), and even his passing was poor. He was exposed in this game as someone who has benefited from facing easy attacking teams, and he is going to have to step his game up, too.
Rating: 2.0
CB Eder Militao
There’s no doubt in my mind that Eder Militao’s injury that forced him off at the half for the far inferior Raul Asencio was one of the turning points of the game for Real Madrid, and it’s no coincidence that Los Blancos completely fell apart without him.
Huijsen has been getting too much credit this season, whereas Militao has been getting too little. He is easily one of the best center backs in the world and one of the most important players to Real Madrid, as this game showed.
Even beyond the insane recovery tackle he made on Sorloth, Militao had a strong game. He was the only defender who didn’t look like a disaster on the ball, and he put out so many fires defensively to make up for the sheer ineptitude of his teammates.
Rating: 7.0
RB Dani Carvajal
Honestly, as sad as it is to say, Dani Carvajal looks washed out there. The pitbull is usually one of the standouts in El Derbi, but he was getting roasted all afternoon long by Atletico Madrid winger Nico Gonzalez, making the former Juventus transfer flop look like a world-class winger.
Worse yet, Carvajal offered nothing to the attack. He never progressed the ball and looked like he was stuck in cinder blocks. Carvajal is untenable at the right back position, and Real Madrid need to be praying for both health and quality from Trent Alexander-Arnold this season.
Rating: 3.0
CM Aurelien Tchouameni
Yet another awful performance from a Real Madrid player who was starting the season brilliantly, Aurelien Tchouameni was, once again, exposed as a liability in a game against a top team, which has been one of the stories of his career at the club thus far.
He looks like Tarzan against Getafe and Mallorca but becomes Jane when it’s time to show up against Atletico Madrid and Barcelona. Tchouameni was bafflingly inept again in the air, and he constantly left massive gaps in midfield with poor – and quite frankly lazy – recovering defending that added heaps of work onto the plates of the other midfielders who should have been allowed to do more attacking.
Tchouameni was even worse on the ball, sending passes into no man’s land. He couldn’t even play simple balls in midfield and did nothing to help the attacking players get into better positions. The Frenchman deserves much more criticism than he’s getting for being the opposite of a solid rock at the base of the Madrid midfield.
Rating: 2.0
CM Fede Valverde
Fede Valverde made some smart interventions defensively and spent the majority of the game desperately trying to fill the gaps left by the center backs and Tchouameni defensively.
He was much better than Tchouameni at recycling the ball accurately as a passer, but, unfortunately, he could do nothing to truly drive the play forward for Real Madrid in this one.
It was an uncharacteristic Derbi from Valverde, who made crucial mental errors defensively, probably because he was burdened by having to do so much. Usually, Valverde shows more fight, quality, and verve to get forward against Atletico Madrid.
Rating: 4.0
CM Jude Bellingham
Although Jude Bellingham has received a huge amount of criticism from Real Madrid fans for this performance, he is the victim of both facing the most expectations of any player in the Real Madrid midfield and also for having to do so much defensive work because the sheer incompetence of everyone behind him besides Militao.
Bellingham led Real Madrid with six tackles and quietly completed 89 percent of his passes. Whenever he actually had the ball, Bellingham looked dangerous and was able to find his attacking teammates or hold onto the ball enough to get it forward in transition, but the problem is he got the ball so little.
It was, all told, a decent enough performance for Bellingham, and the real negativity should be sent to Tchouameni and the defenders for ensuring that he was on the periphery of the game offensively.
Rating: 6.0
LW Vinicius Junior
Vinicius Junior created the second goal of the game for Real Madrid with a brilliant dribble from the left wing, beating Robin Le Normand one-on-one all ends up for the second time that day before cutting it back and delivering a pass to an open Arda Guler.
Admittedly, the ball itself was choppy and of low quality, but when you have a player of Guler’s quality on the end of it, the result will still be a goal. So Vini still gets a positive personal win there, especially because his dribble against the Atleti defense was so good.
The thing is, that’s all Vini could do, and Atleti eventually became wise to the one move the Brazilian superstar was trying on them – that little shimmy and cut back from the wing.
Vinicius was dispossessed too frequently in the second half and could not beat the Atleti defense or progress play for his team. Aside from this assist, Vinicius did not make an impact at all, and you’d expect a lot more from him in the Derbi, especially since he had the ripest matchup of any Real Madrid player to exploit.
Rating: 4.0
RW Arda Guler
The second-best player on the pitch for Real Madrid, Arda Guler slipped a simple through ball into the box for Kylian Mbappe to open Real’s bank account against Atleti at the Wanda, and his second goal was even better.
He watched the cross from Vinicius all the way, looking like a legendary striker in the Karim Benzema or Robert Lewandowski vein with how he took the chance, watching the ball chop up before caressing it with the inside of his foot and letting the pace of the cross do the work to beat Jan Oblak.
When Guler left the game in the second half, which was one of many poor coaching decisions made by Xabi Alonso in the game’s second stanza, the entire match fell apart for Real Madrid without their creative engine.
Guler was the team’s most effective dribbler against the compact Atleti defense and the only one capable of consistently finding quality passes to unlock the defense. He is already the team’s second-most important midfielder or attacking player behind only Kylian Mbappe.
Rating: 7.5
CF Kylian Mbappe
Speaking of Mbappe, he gets almost full credit for the first goal, playing a brilliant one-two with Guler, which has become a trademark of his early Real Madrid career, running into the space behind the Atleti defense.
He then made a brilliant touch away from the defender to set a wide-angled shot up, smashing the ball hard and low across the goal mouth to leave the world-class Jan Oblak for dead.
It was a vintage run and goal from Mbappe, who had so little service but looked so lively whenever he got a rare touch on the ball. He was let down badly by his fullbacks, midfield, and the entirely inconsistent Vinicius Junior in this 5-2 loss.
Mbappe, not Guler, was the best player on the pitch, winning eight combined dribbles completed and fouls drawn against the tough Atleti defense. If he had any sort of help from his teammates around him on that left side or in midfield, he would have had a hat trick on this form.
Rating: 8.0
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.