Parrott had never scored for Betis, and his first goal beat Real Madrid
Jose Mourinho’s first defeat of the season came at the one ground Real Madrid have not won at since 2021, and it turned on a save from the penalty spot.
Sep 5, 2026
Troy Parrott had never scored for Real Betis. Overnight he came off the bench and got his first, and it beat Real Madrid.
Betis won 1-0 at the Estadio de la Cartuja on Friday night, ending Jose Mourinho’s perfect start to the La Liga season at the fourth attempt and leaving the two clubs level on nine points from four games. Kylian Mbappe had the chance to spare Madrid deep into stoppage time and put his penalty where Alvaro Valles could reach it.
The goal came off a save
Madrid had the ball for most of the night and did very little with it. Vinicius Junior hit the post in the first half after Arda Guler rolled the ball across the face of goal. Natan Bernardo de Souza and Marc Bartra both threw themselves in front of Mbappe shots. It was the kind of game where the away side has the ball all evening and slowly runs out of ideas about what to do with it.
Then, nine minutes from time, Nelson Deossa met a cross with his head, Thibaut Courtois pushed it out well, and Parrott was the man who reacted to the rebound. It was not a goal anyone will put in a montage. It counted the same.
Carlos Espi thought he had rescued it with an acrobatic finish from a Vinicius cross. The flag went up for an offside earlier in the move. Mbappe then clipped the crossbar with a delicate attempt, and when Natan caught Vinicius with a heavy late challenge, Madrid had their penalty.
Valles guessed right. Betis had beaten Real Madrid.
Seville is still Seville
Madrid have not won away to Betis since 2021. That was true before Friday, it was one of the odder facts sitting under a three-win start, and it is still true now. Five years is long enough that almost none of the players who started that sequence are involved any more, which is normally the argument for calling a run like this a coincidence. At some point a coincidence that keeps happening stops being interesting as a coincidence.
Parrott’s contribution reads better in context. He arrived without a goal for the club, came on, and got the only one that mattered against the team everyone in Spain measures themselves against. Betis start their second ever Champions League campaign next week off the back of it.
Mourinho could not explain it
“Sometimes you lose and you don’t know why,” Mourinho said afterwards. “We were very dominant, focused, we controlled absolutely everything, with a lot of attacking play, and a lot of chances.”
He was less generous about how his players handled the referee. Betis picked up early bookings for fouls on Federico Valverde and Vinicius, and Mourinho felt his own side gave nothing back. “The Betis players are cleverer than Real Madrid’s in that sense,” he said. “The Real Madrid players are pure, naive.”
It is a familiar complaint from him and it is not entirely wrong, though it does sit slightly awkwardly next to a night where his team hit the woodwork twice and missed a penalty. Madrid created enough. They did not take it. Betis took the one chance they had.