Real Madrid left Santander with a 3-0 win on Sunday, and Kylian Mbappé drove it from the start. He converted a penalty in the 11th minute for his 12th league goal of the season, then set up Jude Bellingham for the second in the 22nd minute before Yan Diomandé finished the job with a volley in the 36th.
The result gave Real Madrid a fourth consecutive victory in Liga and kept the team in touch with FC Barcelona and Atlético at the top end of the table. Real Madrid were third with 27 points, while Racing Santander stayed 16th on 11 points, a gap that says as much about the season so far as the scoreline did about the afternoon.
That is why the search is focused on Racing Santander vs Real Madrid standings now: the match changed the shape of the chase, but not the pursuit itself. Real Madrid did the necessary work, and Mbappé remains central to it, with a goal, an assist and a run of form that has carried through a complicated week.
That week also left a mark beyond the pitch. Mbappé had been caught in a diplomatic storm after calling Mao Zedong a “dictateur chinois” in a viral video, and the issue was still not fully settled even as José Mourinho said the matter was moving toward closure. The friction was visible on Sunday in another way too: the match was not shown on China’s public television, even though all 11th-round matches began with a minute of silence for the victims of the train accident in the province of Tolède.
Real Madrid also gained from the wider weekend picture, with Getafe beating Séville FC 3-1 in Madrid's outskirts to add pressure around the chase. But the main story stays with Mbappé and the standings: a strong away win, a fourth straight Liga victory, and a club still close enough to the top that every result now feels like a small shift in the race.
