Mbappe Scores Twice as Real Madrid Beat Sevilla 4-1, Including a Turn Goal and a Panenka

Kylian Mbappe scored the goal everyone is sharing, then scored a second one a completely different way, as Real Madrid beat Sevilla 4-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu on Sunday. The first was a turn that removed two defenders and the goalkeeper in one movement. The second was a Panenka penalty, chipped down the middle of the goal he had just been fouled in front of. Madrid moved third in La Liga, six points behind Barcelona, a week before El Clasico.

How did Mbappe’s turn goal actually work?

In three touches, near enough. A pass from the left reached Jude Bellingham at the edge of the area, and Bellingham flicked it on into Mbappe’s path. The PA match report, carried by DAZN, describes the rest in the fullest detail available: Mbappe took the ball in his stride, spun clear of his marker, held off another defender, side-stepped goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos and slotted the ball home. Reuters calls the same sequence a brilliant turn and leaves it there. Flashscore adds that Bellingham’s flick was a backheel, set up by Yan Diomande’s pass out to the left, which is the combination Premier Sports posted with a caption comparing it to a video game goal. That framing is why a second goal in a home win spread like a cup final winner.

What did Arda Guler’s opener have to do with it?

It made the turn goal a lead-doubler instead of a lead-taker, which changes how a crowd receives it. Guler fired Madrid ahead on the half hour, drilling a shot into the top corner from the edge of the area, the PA report records. Sevilla were still in the game at 1-0, and Vlachodimos had already kept Mbappe out once with an outstretched leg. Seven minutes later the flick and the turn arrived, and the contest part of the evening was effectively over before half time, at 2-0. Madrid’s season has repeatedly needed a moment like this to separate itself from a stubborn opponent, the same need that sat behind the club’s public rows this month, from Madrid demanding La Liga president Javier Tebas resign to the fallout of Vinicius Junior’s hair-pull red card and four-match ban.

What is a Panenka, and why did Mbappe choose one here?

A Panenka is a penalty chipped softly down the middle while the goalkeeper commits to a side, named after Antonin Panenka. It only works if the keeper dives early, and it looks like a failure of nerve or an insult, depending on which end of it you support. Mbappe won this one himself in the 63rd minute, Flashscore reports, his heels clipped by Castrin after Diomande played him through, and then clipped the chip over Vlachodimos for 3-0, the PA report records. Where the first goal was all movement at full speed, this one was a player standing still and betting the goalkeeper would move first. The agency match report counts the two goals as Mbappe’s tenth and eleventh of the season in all competitions, from 11 appearances, with the penalty his ninth in the league.

Who else scored, and how did 1-0 become 4-1?

Sevilla’s reply came too late to matter and was answered too quickly to build on. Manu Bueno, a substitute, pulled one back with ten minutes left, and Diomande restored the three-goal margin inside two minutes with Madrid’s fourth, Reuters reports. Diomande finished the night with a goal and a part in both of the first two, the pass for Guler’s opener in the data record and the through ball for the penalty. Madrid have now won eight successive home league games, Flashscore records, and they did this one without Vinicius, who is serving his ban and misses the Clasico too. The forward line Madrid will take to Barcelona is being carried by the two men who decided this game, a point worth filing next to the best El Clasico moments the fixture keeps being measured against.

What does the result do to the La Liga table?

It keeps Madrid in touch without closing anything. Madrid are third on 21 points, one behind Atletico Madrid and six behind leaders Barcelona, Reuters reports, with Sevilla sixth on 14. Six points is two results, and the first of the games that could change it is the Clasico itself next week, at the Camp Nou, where a Madrid win halves the gap and a Barcelona win stretches it to nine. Sunday’s value to Madrid is less the points than the condition of their best player going into that week: Mbappe leaves the Bernabeu with a goal the whole internet watched, a penalty taken with a chip, and a scoring rate, 11 goals in 11 games on the agency count, that sits alongside the starts catalogued in the most goals in a Champions League season and the pace records on the fastest soccer players page.

What happens next for Madrid and Mbappe?

Europe first, then the rivalry. Madrid host RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Wednesday, a game Vinicius can play in because his ban is domestic only, and then travel to Barcelona the following week. Whether Sunday’s turn goal counts for anything there is a different question, and this game does not answer it. What it settles is smaller and real: a week out from the fixture that defines their autumn, Madrid’s season is being decided by one player’s two kinds of nerve, the turn at full speed and the chip standing still, and Sevilla were the side asked to stop both on the same night.