Real Madrid returned to Liga F on Saturday night with Espanyol at the Alfredo Di Stéfano, a fixture that arrived 13 days after the league stopped for the first national-team break of the season. For Pau Quesada, it was not just a restart. It was the first chance to steady a team coming off a 7-0 Clásico defeat and a split squad that had been emptied by international duty.
Quesada called it “a match that will be entertaining, competitive,” and said the task was to bring “a very high version” of Real Madrid and keep the focus on the three points against Espanyol rather than the break. That was no small ask. Thirteen first-team players had gone away with their national teams, leaving the coach to piece together a group that had barely been together long enough to absorb the damage from the Clásico, let alone reset it.
The timing also made the search interest obvious. Real Madrid hosted Espanyol at 20:30 hours on Saturday, and the club entered the game with an unbeaten 8/8 record in the meetings cited here. One of those wins was a 1-8, a reminder of how lopsided the matchup has been. Espanyol were arriving into a ground where the home side had never dropped points in this particular run, and where the only real question was whether Madrid could turn that history into a clean response after the break.
Felicia Schröder carried a good part of that story. She came into the match period as the second-highest scorer in Liga F with five goals, and she used the international window to keep her momentum going. For Sweden, she scored in both matches against Lithuania and finished with five goals and one assist in 151 minutes. She said her first Clásico with a large crowd was “a beautiful experience,” but added that the game was not what Madrid had expected and that the scoreline should not have been so heavy. She also said everything happened very fast, and that the team had not had much time to talk about it because it went straight into national-team duty.
That is the part that makes Saturday matter. Madrid were not only trying to recover from a bruising result; they were doing it after a break that scattered the squad across Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Italy and France. María Méndez played 180 minutes for Spain, Eva Navarro scored in Washington, Athenea del Castillo was sent off three minutes after coming on, and Bella Andersson, Filippa Angeldahl, Lineth Beerensteyn, Janou Levels, Lotte Keukelaar, Elisa Senß, Andreia Jacinto, Arianna Caruso and Maëlle Lakrar all logged minutes of their own. Two players were also carrying ankle discomfort, which left Quesada watching the clock as much as the score.
He said the priority was simple: take the three points. The real test, though, was whether Real Madrid could make that sound like a fresh start instead of a pause in the middle of a problem.
