4,835 days later: Mourinho returns, Mbappé hits a hat-trick

Real Madrid beat Real Sociedad 4-1 as José Mourinho returned to the Bernabéu dugout 4,835 days after his last match there. Kylian Mbappé scored three.

Four thousand eight hundred and thirty-five days. That is exactly how long it took José Mourinho to walk back out onto the Santiago Bernabéu touchline as Real Madrid's head coach — and on Wednesday 26 August 2026, the homecoming got the script it deserved. Real Madrid 4-1 Real Sociedad, a Kylian Mbappé hat-trick, and a first home night of the 2026-27 La Liga season that nobody in the stadium will file away as routine. If you run a prediction league with friends, this rescheduled matchday-one fixture handed you plenty to think about.

4,835 days later: Mourinho's return to the Bernabéu dugout

The last time Mourinho had managed a game at the Bernabéu was 1 June 2013, a 4-2 win over Osasuna that closed out his first spell in Madrid. Gonzalo Higuaín, Michael Essien, Karim Benzema and José Callejón scored that night; Roberto Torres and Álvaro Cejudo replied for the visitors. His exit had already been announced, and the reception was anything but unanimous — more whistles than applause when his name went out over the PA, with the Ultras Sur chanting it back regardless.

Thirteen years on, the mood is different. Mourinho arrived at this fixture with a win already banked — his league bow away at Espanyol in Cornellà — and left the Bernabéu with a perfect record: two games, two wins since his return to Spanish football. That matters if you predict results for fun. Season openers under a new manager are exactly where forecasts fall apart, and this Madrid side has begun without leaving much room for doubt.

• Date: Wednesday 26 August 2026, 21:00 local time, Santiago Bernabéu.
• Result: Real Madrid 4-1 Real Sociedad, a rescheduled matchday-one fixture in La Liga 2026-27.
• Scorers: Mbappé (40', 60', 80'), Luka Sučić (44') and Vinícius Júnior (68').
• Jude Bellingham supplied two assists on the night.
• Brahim Díaz had a late fifth goal chalked off by VAR for offside.

Mbappé's hat-trick: three goals, three completely different finishes

The best thing about Mbappé's evening was not the number, it was the range. The deadlock broke on 40 minutes with a superb first touch on a driven Federico Valverde ball and an instant finish. Real Sociedad hit straight back — Luka Sučić levelled on 44 and sent the sides in at the break with a scoreline that was starting to irritate the stands.

After the interval the Frenchman changed gear. On the hour he played a blistering one-two with Jude Bellingham and bent the ball beyond the Sociedad goalkeeper. Then, on 80 minutes, he collected a beautifully weighted Vinícius Júnior pass and chipped it over Remiro to complete the treble. In between, on 68, Vinícius had made it 3-1 with Bellingham involved once more. Brahim Díaz thought he had added a fifth in the closing stages, only for VAR to rule it out.

Those three goals take Mbappé to six in all competitions for Madrid so far this season. Mourinho left him on for the full ninety, and afterwards he explained exactly why.

From a World Cup record to the Bernabéu: Mbappé's perfect year

The hat-trick lands only weeks after the most significant summer of his career. At the 2026 World Cup across the United States, Mexico and Canada, Mbappé scored 10 goals in 8 matches, won a second consecutive Golden Boot and became the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history.

• 22 goals in 22 World Cup appearances: 4 at Russia 2018, 8 at Qatar 2022 and 10 in 2026.
• He moved past Lionel Messi (21) at the top of the all-time list.
• Behind them sit Miroslav Klose (16), Ronaldo Nazário (15) and Gerd Müller (14).
• A second straight Golden Boot, following Qatar 2022.
• He is 27, so the record is very much still open-ended.

That is the forward Mourinho has inherited: a striker arriving at the peak of his powers who, by his manager's own account, is hungry to keep writing history in white. For anyone filling in predictions, the practical takeaway is blunt — when Mbappé starts a season like this, backing a home win at the Bernabéu becomes a far easier box to tick.

The Bernabéu whistles, even in a four-goal win

One moment deserves its own paragraph. At 1-1 in the first half, the Bernabéu whistled. Not at Mourinho, but at the performance. He shrugged it off afterwards: that is simply what this stadium is, a crowd that always wants more because of the history behind the badge. It says a lot about the environment Mourinho has walked back into — two wins, seven goals scored, and supporters demanding from the first whistle anyway.

What predictors should take from Real Madrid v Real Sociedad

Past the headline, there are genuinely useful reads here for the weeks ahead. None of them is a guarantee — that is rather the point — but they beat a coin flip:

• Mourinho named the same starting eleven that won in Cornellà: continuity rather than wholesale rotation.
• Four goals at home against a European-calibre side like Real Sociedad is not a formality result.
• The calendar is skewed: several clubs have games in hand, so the table lies until it evens out.
• Watch the squads packed with World Cup internationals — July's workload tends to arrive as a bill in September.

If you enjoy arguing about this stuff — whether Mourinho's Madrid keep the perfect record going, whether Mbappé is heading for another Pichichi, whether Real Sociedad recover from a rough start — the fun part is putting a scoreline on it. On quiniPrats you can set up a prediction league with friends in a couple of minutes, call every La Liga matchday and find out who in your group actually reads the game. No betting involved: just the satisfaction of having written 4-1 before Mbappé made it true.