Three stats as Real Madrid twice surrendered the lead to lose to Villarreal

Real Madrid suffered a shock defeat as they twice surrendered a lead at home to lose to Villarreal as Quique Setién’s team emerged the victors at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.

On a night to forget for Madridistas, Pau Torres scored an early own goal before Samu Chukwueze danced around Nacho to equalise before the break. Vinícius Júnior’s strike in the second half was not enough either as José Luis Morales and Chukwueze again sealed a historic win for Villarreal.

Here are three stats that help us to understand the game and what it means for Real Madrid.

17: Shots from Villarreal, the most of any side to visit the Bernabéu this season

No team has bombarded the Real Madrid goal in the same way that Villarreal did on Saturday night. 17 shots against is the highest that Real Madrid have faced in a game at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu since April 12th 2022, when Chelsea recorded 27 over 120 minutes in their Champions League quarterfinal second leg.

This time it was a LaLiga game and Villarreal, who became the first team to score three against Real Madrid since Al Hilal in the Club World Cup and the first at the Bernabéu since Chelsea in Europe a year ago. It’s the first time since Rayo Vallecano scored a treble at Vallecas that it’s happened in Spain.

With 1.61 xG leading to three goals, it’s the highest expected goals figure for an opponent in LaLiga since Cádiz registered 1.8 in November but only scored once. Here, Chukwueze’s clinical finishing and José Luis Morales’ third goal in his last five visits to Chamartín made the difference.

Given that these goals took the number of goals conceded to Villarreal this season to seven across three games, with five in LaLiga accounting for 20.8% of all goals conceded in the league, it raises questions over how Carlo Ancelotti took on this challenge of facing Quique Setién.

Villarreal have now done the double over Real Madrid in LaLiga after their victory at the Estadio de La Cerámica earlier this year, a feat they had never achieved in their history, and had not pulled off a single win against Los Blancos since 2018.

5: Goal involvements from Vinícius Júnior in the last 7 days

If there was a positive for Real Madrid to take from this game, it was a fine goal and another strong display from Vinícius Júnior.

He was involved in the build up to the own goal and then scored one himself to give Real Madrid the lead early in the second half, adding to his goal at Camp Nou earlier this week and another assist, with two assists against Valladolid last weekend on top of that.

The last time Vini scored in consecutive games in Spain was back in early November, scoring against Girona and Celtic, and he had only done so since at the Club World Cup earlier this year.

The Brazilian appears to have his mojo back and was thriving, and despite being fouled an incredible nine times, he won more duels than any other player with 16 victorious duels. For context, that’s more than double the number of duels won by any other Real Madrid player.

This result is a blow, but Vini’s performance will be one of the silver linings to give hope to Real Madrid as attentions now turn to Chelsea.

Photo by Florencia Tan Jun/Getty Images

233: Minutes without conceding came to an end

When Samuel Chukwueze scored and became the fifth Nigerian to do so against Real Madrid at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, it brought an end to Real Madrid’s run of 233 consecutive minutes without conceding. It saw Los Blancos beaten for the first time since Franck Kessié’s goal at Spotify Camp Nou for Barcelona in the LaLiga Clásico on March 19th.

It came after a series of eight consecutive shots across 12 minutes in the match all came from players in yellow. While they weren’t golden chances, Chukwueze himself and Álex Baena had both had chances which registered 0.14 and 0.17 respectively on the xG scale.

However, when Chukwueze converted it ended Real Madrid’s hopes of recording three clean sheets in a row for the first time in 16 months. It hasn’t been a spell of perfect defending, the 2.84 expected goals conceded before Chukwueze’s goal show that and reflect perhaps an element of luck that opposition forwards have not been firing on all cylinders, but Real Madrid have shown an ability to see out games and Thibaut Courtois has risen to the occasion when called upon.

The last time Real Madrid achieved three in a row was in December 2021, when Real Madrid recorded five consecutive shut outs, against Athletic Club (1-0), Real Sociedad (2-0), Inter Milan (2-0), Atlético Madrid (2-0) and Cádiz (0-0). During that spell, the back four lined up with a rotation of Dani Carvajal and Lucas Vázquez at right-back, Éder Militão and David Alaves in the middle, and Ferland Mendy at left-back. During this run, the back four hasn’t been too dissimilar barring the injured Mendy’s absence.

Next up is Chelsea, who failed to score for a third consecutive match against Wolves on Saturday. The Blues have the highest underperformance in the Premier League at 13.04 fewer goals than expected goals, and will arrive in Madrid knowing that they could have their work cut out to find a way through the Real Madrid defence.