From the "Vipers" to "Las Palmas": "Amr's hand" rescues Real Madrid from Betis' well

The royal side returned to winning ways in La Liga

Real Madrid have bounced back from their shock defeat to Real Betis in the previous round, this time at the expense of Rayo Vallecano.

Los Blancos beat Rayo 4-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu on Saturday evening in the fifth round of the Spanish league.

The return of the magician

Portugal's Jose Mourinho, the head coach of Real Madrid, went into the match with a line-up similar to his last game against Inter Milan in the Champions League, making two key changes.

Ivorian Yan Diomande started on the right wing at the expense of Turkey's Arda Guler, while Portugal's Bernardo Silva featured in midfield in place of Alexander-Arnold.

Bernardo's return to midfield gave Real Madrid great fluidity. He was the magic solution for his team-mates, carrying the ball out of the first and second thirds all the way to goal.

True, the Portuguese star did not score or provide an assist directly. But every goal Real Madrid scored before he went off bore his imprint from the outset.

The sin of Rayo Vallecano

Despite this, leaning on Silva and Federico Valverde in midfield behind Jude Bellingham was not a good solution overall. The team needs a player more capable of covering the depth of the pitch, the number 6 role, in the mould of Aurélien Tchouaméni.

Rayo Vallecano never gave themselves the chance to exploit that defensive gap. Their players seemed to compete over who could gift Real Madrid's attackers the most errors, and the Royal club punished them with two goals inside the first 17 minutes.

Naive individual mistakes handed Madrid both goals. First came a penalty conceded for Kylian Mbappé's opener, then a misplaced pass that teed up Álvaro Carreras for the second.

Go two goals down to Real Madrid inside 17 minutes and any side will struggle to come back. Rayo realised as much. They retreated to defend and stop the bleeding rather than chase the game, and even that they failed to manage.

Mourinho's sin

But with the start of the second half, Mourinho felt the match was over, so he decided to bring on the French midfielder Eduardo Camavinga at the expense of Valverde. Real Madrid then lost the midfield completely.

Rayo Vallecano's players and their coach Íñigo Pérez had the courage to venture out of their own half. Real Madrid's excessive retreat helped them, coupled with repeated loss of the ball, and the hosts could not get out of the middle third of the pitch.

Exploiting the clear gap in Real Madrid's depth, the visitors began firing shots at the Royal team's goal. Were it not for the brilliance of the Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, they would have scored more than one.

The Portuguese coach tried to remedy the situation and close the gap in depth by defending with Tchouaméni at the expense of Bernardo Silva. He knew, though, that this change would mean losing the last element capable of controlling the ball and keeping it at the feet of his players.

The solution lies with Güler

The substitution came immediately: Arda Guler on for Diomande, and it changed the course of the game entirely.

Play had been tilting towards Courtois's goal. The Turkish teenager restored the balance, returning the ball to Real Madrid feet and controlling the tempo beautifully.

Guler sprinkled his magic. He came close to winning a penalty before creating the fourth goal, finished by French star Kylian Mbappe.

Guler took Real Madrid by the hand and led them to safety, after they had come close to falling into the same trap that caught them against Real Betis.

At the hands of Amr, not Madrid

The old Arabs had a saying, "By my own hand, not by Amr's," to describe someone who acts alone rather than waiting on others. Real Madrid, in their last two matches, have known no such thing.

Rayo Vallecano's mistakes handed the Whites their reward tonight, and Madrid's own glaring errors barely mattered. The same script played out against the vipers of Inter Milan in the Champions League.

Mourinho got the Inter match wrong from the start too. He leaned on Valverde alongside Arnold in midfield, which gifted the Italians a big advantage. Then they threw it away themselves, undone by naive mistakes from their own players.

Aurel Bisseck gave away the first. The Inter Milan defender lost the ball in a dangerous area, Brahim Diaz pounced, and Kylian Mbappe finished off the opener.

Then came something even more naive. Goalkeeper Josep Martinez tried to dribble past Federico Valverde, lost the ball to the Real Madrid man, and watched it roll straight into the net for the second.

Inter did score in the second half and came close to levelling. But they never recovered from the hole they had dug themselves, exactly as Rayo Vallecano would later discover.