Mourinho’s Perfect Start Snapped by Betis
Jose Mourinho’s second coming at Real Madrid hit its first real crack in Seville, and the man who drove the wedge in was a striker he once tried to slow down.
Final Score: Real Betis 1–0 Real Madrid
Mourinho’s perfect start snapped
Madrid arrived in Andalusia purring. Three wins from three in La Liga, four goals smashed past Real Sociedad, another four against Malaga. The attack looked loose, confident, ruthless.
Then Betis, guided by Mourinho’s long-time adversary Manuel Pellegrini, dragged them into something altogether different. The game grew tight, tense, attritional. Madrid pushed, but they never really flowed. The control they had shown in the opening weeks drained away into frustration.
The pressure finally told — against them.
Parrott’s moment, Courtois’ anguish
With nine minutes left, Betis swung in a corner from the right. Pablo Fornals delivered, Nelson Deossa met it, and Thibaut Courtois produced the kind of save that usually preserves points and headlines.
Not this time.
The rebound dropped, and Troy Parrott pounced. One touch, one ruthless swing, the ball ripped high into the net. Courtois lay beaten, the stadium erupted, and Betis suddenly had a famous lead.
For Parrott, it was a thunderous way to announce himself in Spain. His first La Liga goal, at 24, against Real Madrid, to beat Mourinho. Betis had moved for him after he hit 20 goals over the last two seasons with AZ in the Eredivisie. This, though, was a different stage entirely.
Madrid still had a lifeline. Kylian Mbappé stepped up late on, a penalty to salvage something from a bruising evening. He missed. The spot-kick was saved, the chance gone, and with it Mourinho’s perfect league record in his second spell.
The kid Mourinho once held back
The twist in all this sits years back in north London.
Parrott is no stranger to Mourinho. He came through the academy at Tottenham and made his Premier League debut in 2019 under the Portuguese coach, a raw talent being pushed into the spotlight.
By March 2020, an injury crisis left him as the only fit striker at Spurs. The clamour in the stands and online was deafening: play the kid. Mourinho refused to give in and instead sent a message, publicly and privately.
"I told him: 'Every time you play with the kids of your age, you have to show your colleagues why you are the privileged one.' Because it was something he was not doing," Mourinho said back then. "Every time he was playing with the kids, he was playing with the mentality of, 'I shouldn't be here' or, 'I am too good to be here.'
He pushed the point harder.
"Troy cannot go there [the under‑age teams] with discontent, contempt. It is a process. So everything goes very, very well. But this is a world where lots of people don't even know if Troy has long hair or short hair, or is blond or is dark. They don't even know that and they speak about Troy, Troy, Troy. There was a guy behind me on the bench the other day: 'Play Troy, play Troy.' I don't think he knows Troy."
Then the world stopped. The coronavirus pandemic shut football down, and any immediate window for Parrott at Spurs slammed shut with it. When the game restarted, he was on his way to Millwall, the first of several loan spells in search of minutes, rhythm, and identity.
Advice that came back around
Parrott never bit back at those Mourinho comments. Quite the opposite.
Speaking to Millwall’s official channels in August 2020, he framed it as a lesson, not a slight.
"To be fair, he's such an experienced manager and he's done nearly everything in the game, so if he feels like that's right then there must be some truth in it and I had to take it on the chin," he said.
"I knew I just had to keep my head down in training and keep working hard. And getting this loan now is hopefully going to help me improve and push on. There were little conversations that were being had. I was speaking to coaching staff and players finding out what I needed to do to be better.
"Because obviously Mourinho has worked with some of the best strikers there's ever been, to get advice off him was great. I knew what I needed to do. It was helpful advice."
That advice echoed around La Cartuja as Parrott, no longer the kid who “shouldn’t be here”, punished Madrid with the kind of cold, decisive finish Mourinho has always demanded from his forwards.
On Friday night, the process Mourinho preached came full circle — and it landed squarely on his La Liga title bid.
