Turns out Jerod Mayo wasn’t completely wrong when he made his much-analyzed comment about the New England Patriots being “soft.” It’s just that he directed his Insta-slam post at the wrong people: If only he had aimed it at Patriots legends instead of Patriots players, Mayo would be getting saluted in every port of call in Football America.

The Patriots legends of whom we speak are Robert Kraft, the no-doubt-about-it savior of the franchise whose vision and business acumen are why the NFL has a team called the “New England Patriots” and not a team called the “St. Louis Stallions” or whatever they would have been called if only the late James Busch Orthwein had had his way.

The other legend is Bill Belichick, the no-doubt-about-it greatest coach in NFL history whose two decades of point/counterpoint with Tom Brady produced six Super Bowl victories. (And if you’re in the Belichick-is-overrated-because-drool-he-never-won-anything-without-Brady camp, please sell your crazy somewhere else. I’ve explained the lunacy of that take a million times and lack the patience to do so again today.)

But two things can be true at once. Yes, Belichick is a sure-as-shootin’ Hall of Fame coach, and, yes, Kraft should have received his Canton kiss years ago, but in recent weeks these two fellas have been presenting themselves as a couple of needy, insecure old men.

Caught in the middle of all this Kraft-Belichick whining and caterwauling is Mayo, whose focus is the 2024 Patriots. As opposed to the 83-year-old Kraft and the 72-year-old Belichick, who can’t move on from the 2019 through 2023 Patriots.

It begins with Kraft, who wants to take his share of credit for the good things that have happened with the 21st-century Patriots while also making it sound like he was in the other room whenever the bad stuff happened.

But Kraft was definitely out to lunch when he went on “The Breakfast Club” and said, “Our record the last three to four years wasn’t what I wanted. And I had given him (Belichick) so much power. He had full control over everything. And shame on me, I should’ve had some checks and balances better.”

GO DEEPER

What is with the drama surrounding Bill Belichick, Jerod Mayo and the Patriots?

Nobody needed a secret decoder ring to translate what Kraft was saying, which is that Belichick screwed everything up when the owner had his back turned.

These words from Kraft provided a hold-my-beer moment for Belichick, who proved he could be even needier and more insecure than his former boss.

“I’m kind of hurt for those guys,” Belichick said during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

“To call them soft — they’re not soft. They were the best team in the league last year against the run, and those guys went out there and did it even though we couldn’t score many points offensively.”

“The Patriots led the league in rushing defense last year and they still have a lot of those players..

I’m hurt for those guys because they’re not soft..

I feel bad for the defensive players because they’re all tough players” ~ Bill Belichick #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/wVN9ufcNMg

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) October 21, 2024

Again, you don’t need a secret decoder ring. Belichick was nominally speaking about Mayo, but he was really speaking to Kraft, essentially saying, “That’s what you get for firing me.”

Belichick was also speaking to former players of his when he said, “I feel bad for the defensive players on that one because that’s a tough group. Jon Jones, (Davon) Godchaux, Jennings, Josh Uche. Those are all tough players.”

Secret decoder ring: You guys miss me, right?

GO DEEPER

Bill Belichick’s media blitz: Seeking next coaching job or settling all family business?

Belichick is being paid handsomely to be opinionated and provocative. He throws in the neediness and score-settling for free. As for Kraft, I can’t help but feel everything he says is designed to bolster his Hall of Fame candidacy, except that the attempts come across as needless and clunky. Kraft should be judged on his record, not his reminders.

Besides, if Kraft truly believes it was a missing system of checks and balances that doomed the Patriots in the last years of the Belichick era, he’d have made sure to help out his new coach, Mayo, with some of those checks and balances. Years ago when the Red Sox hired 28-year-old Theo Epstein to be their general manager, they brought in the late Bill Lajoie, a seasoned baseball man who helped build a World Series winner in Detroit, as a “special assistant.” Alex Cora, in his first year as manager of the Red Sox, brought in Ron Roenicke as his bench coach. Roenicke had managed the Milwaukee Brewers for four-plus seasons, as well as managing the Dodgers’ Double-A San Antonio club in 1997 when 21-year-old Alex Cora was his shortstop.

Other than Ben McAdoo and his two seasons as head coach of the New York Giants, there’s not much in the way of seasoned perspective on the 2024 Patriots. Some of that is on Mayo. Mostly it’s on ownership, which oversaw a rebuild of the front office and coaching staff.

As for Belichick, his cute little dog-whistling fools nobody. In calling out Mayo, he’s exposing his own softness.

The referendum on Jerod Mayo’s tenure as head coach of the Patriots will likely continue for what’s left of this season and into the offseason. But, really, it’s pointless. It behooves the Patriots to see what Mayo can accomplish with a year’s worth of head-coaching acumen on his resume. It behooves the Patriots to work with Mayo and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf to add some been-there-done-that to the coaching staff and front office.

And it would behoove Mayo to a) improve his messaging, and b) while I have everyone’s attention, perhaps try being a little more aggressive with the play calling. You know, surprise us now and then.

Lastly, it would behoove Kraft and Belichick to take their little squabble out to the schoolyard and stop dragging Mayo into it. He has in-the-moment, grown-up things to do.

Scoop City Newsletter

Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.

Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.

Sign Up

(Photo of Bill Belichick, Jerod Mayo and DeMarcus Covington: Perry Knotts / Getty Images)

Brad and Charlie Hart are season-ticket holders at Spurs. Father and son, they always sit near the tunnel at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and at full time, after every game, 10-year-old Charlie will rush to try to get the attention of the players as they walk off the pitch.

But earlier this month, after Tottenham had beaten West Ham United 4-1, Charlie realised he had forgotten his trusted marker pen for those autographs he covets so much. Little did he know that he would leave the stadium that Saturday afternoon not with a few squiggles of ink on his shirt or a programme but with a true collector’s item.

During the match, Spurs’ goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario had put on a baseball cap to keep the lunchtime sun from his eyes, a moment celebrated by nostalgic football purists as a welcome return of a once-prominent piece of goalkeeper kit. “Old school vibes,” said one fan on social media.

Those were the days: a ’keeper in a cap or maybe jogging pants, putting comfort before fashion, looking more suitably dressed to wash the car or take the dog for a Sunday morning walk than play in the world’s top domestic football league. While it was commonplace in the 1990s and early 2000s to see a goalkeeper in a cap — Oliver Kahn for Germany and Bayern Munich springs to mind — it is a more unusual sight now. Long gone are the days of goalkeepers wearing flat caps, like the great Lev Yashin.

“Vicario came out with the goalkeeper coach (Rob Burch), who was holding the cap,” Charlie, from Harpenden, a commuter town north of London, tells The Athletic. “He (Burch) just looked in my eyes and said, ‘Catch’, and then he threw the cap. I caught it in one hand because my dad’s phone was in the other, although I would have happily dropped my dad’s phone to secure the catch.”

Unlike his father, who remembers goalkeepers in caps as a more familiar sight, it was the first time outside YouTube videos that Charlie had seen a ’keeper wearing one in a game.

In recent years, England internationals Dean Henderson and Jordan Pickford have worn caps for their clubs, Crystal Palace and Everton, but they are in the minority.

So why has the hat-wearing goalkeeper become so rare?

International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules for the 2024-25 season state that caps for goalkeepers are permitted, as are “sports spectacles” and tracksuit bottoms. There are also specific rules on head covers for players, including the need for them to be black or the same main colour as the shirt, but the same directives do not apply to baseball-style caps worn by goalkeepers. If the rules haven’t changed, what has?

Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland became synonymous with cap-wearing during his pro career, which began in the late 1990s. When people meet him now, the 43-year-old says it is still something he is remembered for.

Kirkland, who won one cap for England, started wearing a cap in training when he was a young player at Coventry City’s academy after seeing the senior team’s first-choice goalkeeper, Steve Ogrizovic, use one. Kirkland found it helpful for boosting concentration levels, as much as for keeping the sun’s glare out of his eyes.

Lev Yashin wearing a flat cap when playing for the Soviet Union against England during the 1958 World Cup (Pressens Bild / AFP)

“I always used to wear one in training because I’m not great in the sun,” Kirkland, who joined Liverpool in 2001 aged 20 in a deal that made him the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain, tells The Athletic. 

“I burn, so I used to wear caps to keep the sun off my face. But I got used to it and it helped give me better vision. It used to block other things out and I found myself being able to concentrate more because it blocked out distractions. I used to wear it sometimes even when it wasn’t sunny, which I used to get a few strange looks for.

GO DEEPER

Chris Kirkland: ‘I was taking 2,500mg of Tramadol a day. I had it in my goalie bag on the pitch’

“A cap can block the sun out at certain angles, which I used to find helpful. I’m surprised ‘keepers don’t wear them anymore because you see them (when facing the sun). They put their arm up and their hand over their eyes, which is obviously a distraction itself.”

Fans have come to the rescue of squinting goalkeepers plenty of times. When Leeds United goalkeeper Felix Wiedwald was struggling with the sunshine away at Barnsley in 2017, a supporter emerged from the away end to heroically give up his cap. A year later, a West Ham fan threw one onto the pitch for England’s No 1 Joe Hart to wear during an FA Cup third-round tie against Shrewsbury Town. 

Kirkland played for Coventry, Liverpool and Wigan Athletic among others (David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images)

“I stuck with the same cap for years,” Kirkland adds. “It was a navy blue Nike one, and the Nike tick eventually fell off because I wore it that much. I did well in the first game and stuck with it. The only time I would wear another is if I had taken it out of my kit bag to wash it. It was rotten by the end, but I kept it for years until the missus made me get rid. She was like, ‘That is absolutely honking and has got to go!’.”

Richard Lee is a former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper known for his caps — but not because he used to wear one.

“I’ve got a bit more of an association with caps because I went on Dragons’ Den (a British business-based game show) back in the day and it was for a cap company, but I never wore one in a game,” Lee, now a football agent with a long list of goalkeeper clients, tells The Athletic. 

“Wearing a cap was good when the sun is out of your eyes, but the moment a cross comes in, or a ball is played over the top, and you get that sudden glare, you look up and the sun hits you. So, I’d almost prefer to have the sun there the whole time and you knew where it was.”

Style could be another reason for goalkeepers opting out of wearing caps. It could simply be a fashion choice.

“You look at the goalkeepers now and they realise they’ve got a certain brand and look, and that does play a part,” Lee adds. “When you go out (onto the pitch) you want to feel a certain way and present yourself a certain way, whether that’s to the fans, the scouts or your team-mates.”

More on the world of sport and fashion…

Elite goalkeepers choosing not to wear caps influences the next generation, too. “The younger ones will copy what the current Premier League goalkeepers are doing,” Lee says. “You’re seeing it less and less at younger age groups too.”

Towards the end of her career, former Everton and England goalkeeper Rachel Brown-Finnis found “a better alternative” to wearing a cap.

“For a while, Nike produced sunglasses-like soft contact lenses. They were bright orange and when you put them in they looked a bit ‘Halloween’,” Brown-Finnis tells The Athletic. “They were by far the most effective thing. I hated wearing caps because they were fine if the ball was on the ground, but as soon as the ball came up in the air, you had to tilt your angle and vision — you were looking into the sun.”

Brown-Finnis said sunshine is a problem for goalkeepers and increases the importance of the pre-game coin toss for an afternoon game. A goalkeeper, she said, would want their counterpart to be facing the sun in the first half in the hope the strength of the sun’s rays died down in the second.

“Clearly that being seen as an advantage for your team to not be in the sun in the first half, it does affect the goalkeeper and players. It’s interesting that there’s not a standard intervention for that,” she said.

Jacob Widell Zetterstrom of Derby County, in the second-tier Championship, is one of the few goalkeepers across the professional game in England who wears headgear. The Sweden international wears a protective scrum cap, something The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst Matt Pyzdrowski is familiar with.

Zetterstrom of Derby during a match in August (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

During the final seven years of his career, spent playing in Sweden, where he still resides as head of academy for his former club Angelholms, Pyzdrowski wore a protective head guard, similar to the one popularised by former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, who returned to the sport wearing the rugby-style cap in January 2007, three months after a collision with Reading’s Stephen Hunt fractured his skull.

“It was too many concussions in a short period,” Pyzdrowski says. “I remember the specialist I met told me, ‘Matt, you have got to be careful, because we don’t know how much this is going to impact you. If you want to have a good life in the future, you need to start thinking about the risk versus reward of 1) playing and 2) protecting yourself’.

“When you put that into perspective, I was like, ‘I have to wear a helmet’. For the rest of my career, I had a rugby helmet on. Every single training session, every single match, it became part of my outfit.

“It took some time to get used to heading the ball, as well as learning how to control it, but the big benefit was how it made me feel secure. When you come back from a head injury, you become timid, even if you were an aggressive goalkeeper before that. It took me a while to feel safe again, even when I had the helmet.”

Charlie Hart received a memorable memento at Spurs’ home match against West Ham this month (Brad Hart)

Pyzdrowski said protective headgear is becoming more prevalent in Sweden, with a few top-flight goalkeepers wearing them. “As a goalkeeper, you are very vulnerable. You have to be brave and put yourself in very difficult and unsafe situations. When I think about it, and about the safety of goalkeepers, it really should become a priority,” he says. 

As for Charlie, after taking Vicario’s cap to school to show his classmates, he is hoping to get it signed by the player himself at one of Tottenham’s upcoming home games. It will then be put in a display case — a reminder of the special family day that sparked a nostalgic outpouring within the football world.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

On Sunday, not even 24 hours after the heavy blow of losing El Clasico 4-0 to Barcelona at the Bernabeu, there was another seismic shift at Real Madrid.

From the highest levels of the club came the order to cancel Monday’s planned trip to Paris, where everyone was expecting, among other prizes, Vinicius Junior to win the Ballon d’Or.

Real Madrid were told that would not be the case, and that the winner would not be Dani Carvajal either. The defender, who won last summer’s Euros with Spain was Los Blancos’ other major candidate.

At the club’s offices, they argued that if Vinicius Jr did not win and they looked to the European Championship, Carvajal would have to be ahead of the rest, including another Madrid player, England’s Jude Bellingham.

But neither Vinicius Jr nor Carvajal would ultimately lift the trophy, prompting indignation and anger in Madrid. As a result, no one from the club was present at the event to see Rodri, another of Spain’s Euros winners but a star for Premier League champions Manchester City, crowned the world’s best footballer for 2023-24.

Here, The Athletic takes you inside a horrible 48 hours for Vinicius Jr and Madrid.

No one at Real Madrid expected this outcome.

More than in previous years, much effort was made to maintain secrecy and to avoid the identities of the award winners from leaking. Interviews and photoshoots that used to take place before the ceremony were delayed until afterwards.

While some reports in Spain indicated Vinicius Jr would be named the winner for the first time, The Athletic reported on Monday that neither Real Madrid, Vinicius Jr nor most of those who work at France Football (the publication which created the award) knew the winner.

Previously, there had been complete confidence in Madrid that Vinicius Jr would lift the trophy.

“I think he’s going to win the Ballon d’Or because of what he has done last year, which helped us win the Champions League, not because of the three goals today,” Carlo Ancelotti said on Tuesday after the 24-year-old’s hat-trick inspired his team to a comeback victory over Borussia Dortmund.

That hope was partly a consolation, a painkiller for the home drubbing by Barcelona on Saturday, a result which took Hansi Flick’s side six points clear at the top of La Liga.

On Sunday morning, however, Vinicius Jr was informed he would not win the Ballon d’Or. It was a shock for him and all those around him, even though in the weeks leading up to it they always maintained they did not know what would happen.

The player and his staff had prepared in detail for the trip, with around 30 companions due to travel, including people from his agency, family and friends. Some of his guests had travelled from Brazil expressly for this purpose. An after-party was also planned for the event on Monday.

Multiple sources who, like others in this article, wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships, have told The Athletic that Nike, Vinicius Jr’s main sporting sponsor, had prepared special boots to celebrate an eventual victory. In addition, they had organised an event in Madrid which the footballer, people close to him and influencers were due to attend. Nike has been contacted for comment.

Vinicius Jr celebrates after scoring his team’s second goal in last season’s Champions League final (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)

For hours on Sunday, there were moments of tension and a long wait for a decision on what to do. Finally, the Real Madrid board decided that there would be no trip to Paris. All parties agreed it was the best approach after envisaging the images of disappointment in Paris, where they would have gone with every hope that Vinicius Jr would be the winner. In addition, the lack of communication from France Football, either with the club or with the player, had annoyed Madrid.

As Sunday afternoon turned to evening, many more people, including Ancelotti, were informed by the club that they would not be travelling, despite the fact a delegation of around 50 people was scheduled to do so. That order came from the top.

At a very difficult time, Vinicius Jr was comforted by the fact that the whole club was in agreement about not travelling. As soon as the news reached his team-mates, they sent him numerous messages of encouragement, as they would do publicly after the gala.

The clearest came from Eduardo Camavinga: “FOOTBALL POLITICS. My brother you are the best player in the world and no award can say otherwise. Love you my bro,” the player wrote on X.

At one point it was envisaged that Emilio Butragueno, director of institutional relations, would travel, but this was finally ruled out on Monday as well. It meant Real Madrid had no one there to collect their award for men’s club of the year, and no one to accept when Ancelotti was named men’s coach of the year.

“It is not good for football that a club as important as Madrid and with so many fans worldwide is not present at such a gala,” Spain coach Luis de la Fuente told Movistar.

“I was surprised, yes, because I had spoken to someone from Real Madrid who said they were going to come here at 13:30 and suddenly I’m in the hotel and I’m surprised by the news,” Luis Figo, Los Blancos legend and a Ballon d’Or winner, told Movistar.

There was a clue on Monday morning for the more attentive ones: surprisingly, Real Madrid TV would be showing a film at the same time as the Ballon d’Or gala. The club’s website and social media would also make no mention of any of the awards received.

Shortly before 3pm, Real Madrid privately reported that the growing rumours were true.

“If the award criteria do not proclaim Vinicius Jr the winner, those same criteria should proclaim Carvajal the winner,” a club source told The Athletic. “As this has not been the case, it is obvious that the UEFA Ballon d’Or does not respect Real Madrid. And Real Madrid is not where it is not respected.”

Minutes later, people from Vinicius Jr’s agency confirmed to The Athletic that they were in Madrid after being informed by the club and that they would not be travelling to Paris.

Club sources explained they had found out because Manchester City knew Rodri would be the winner, although sources briefed on the process assure The Athletic that the information did not come from the English club.

Real Madrid were quick to point out that the name of the award is “Ballon d’Or-UEFA”, given European football’s governing body is involved in the organistion of the event. The club and UEFA have been at odds since Madrid’s involvement in a proposed European Super League.

“I think there are problems between Real Madrid and UEFA, which affected some things in the results,” former Madrid midfielder Clarence Seedorf told TNT Sports on the red carpet in Paris. “Vinicius Junior is the one who definitely deserves the award. It is a shame.“

It is worth noting that the award is decided on the basis of a vote by 100 journalists.

As the afternoon wore on, the law of silence was established at Vinicius Jr’s camp. Members of the team were asked not to speak to the press for a while.

However, at 6.30pm, a friend of Vinicius Jr’s gave the first public reaction.

“But this award not going into your hands only shows the mentality of those who are afraid of our presence,” wrote singer MC Maneirinho, receiving likes from other friends and agency members. From Valdebebas, something else was also highlighted: the audience at the event shouted Vinicius Jr’s name in the seconds before Rodri’s name was called out as the winner.

The day left Real Madrid and Vinicius Jr with one main question: what else does he have to do to lift the Ballon d’Or?

Winning the Champions League (involved in 11 goals in 10 games, including one in the final), La Liga (involved in 21 goals in 26 games, one every 89 minutes on average) and the Spanish Super Cup (hat-trick in the final against Barcelona) was not enough. So what would be?

(Top photo: Getty Images; design: John Bradford)

BATH TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Carrie Brown was an exasperated middle-school teacher who had a famous student she knew she could count on.

In the fall of 2017, Brown was teaching social studies at Old Trail School, a small, private institution of about 500 children from ages 2 through the eighth grade on a sprawling 62 acres inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a few miles northeast of Akron, Ohio.

Each day at recess, as Brown looked out onto the outdoor basketball court at the bottom of an old amphitheater, she watched her sixth-grade students bicker intensely over who should have the ball or take all the shots.

She knew Bronny James was the opposite of that when he was her student the year before, so she asked the seventh grader for help.

“I pulled him aside and said, ‘Hey, would you mind giving up a recess and talking to my sixth graders?’ But I didn’t tell him what to say,” Brown said during a recent tour of the school and visit with several of Bronny’s former teachers and coaches, in which Brown allowed The Athletic into her classroom where she once taught Bronny.

The hallways inside the Old Trail campus building where most classes are taught are long and narrow. The walls are white and the lockers red; there are hooks on both sides for younger students to hang their coats and backpacks.

Brown said she wasn’t surprised when Bronny, 13 at the time, agreed to forgo his recess, stroll down the long hallway past the lockers and the hooks and into Room 616 where she taught him world history to deliver his message.

But she was stunned by the poignancy and clarity of what he said.

“It was like I paid him,” she said. “He said perfectly that, ‘If you ever want to play competitively, like for real, they’re not going to take you unless you’re a team player. You could be the best of the best. But if you don’t know how to work with other people, then they don’t want you on their team.’

“Coming from him, it meant so much, because he could speak to it.”

If all you know about Bronny James, 20, the eldest son of the world-renowned basketball megastar and billionaire LeBron James, is that Bronny is young, rich and famous, that he plays on the Los Angeles Lakers because his dad, who is the all-time leading scorer in NBA history and also a Laker, wanted it to be so, then the way the people of Old Trail remember him might surprise you.

Old Trail School is just minutes from Bronny’s family mansion in Bath Township and about 25 miles from Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, where LeBron, Bronny and the Lakers will play the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.

LeBron, or Dad, whichever you prefer here, built the house and moved into it early in his career with the Cavs. For a time, Savannah James, LeBron’s wife and Bronny’s mother, sat on the board at Old Trail.

Bronny went there for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and part of first grade before moving to Miami when his dad joined the Heat for the 2010-11 NBA season. When the family returned to Cleveland in 2014, Bronny, his younger brother Bryce and their baby sister Zhuri were all enrolled there. Bronny was back at Old Trail from fourth through seventh grade, before the family relocated to Los Angeles.

Bronny, his former teachers said, would occasionally miss a homework assignment. They learned to chalk that up to the time demands of a hectic life he led as the son of arguably the greatest NBA player ever, whose legend is even larger in the Cleveland and Akron areas.

To this day, though, Brown keeps in her desk a sample of Bronny’s creative writing and a picture he drew as part of a lesson on Greek mythology. “Bronny, this is excellent! I’m proud of you!” Brown wrote on his paper – a piece of historical fiction imagining how the children of Zeus plotted against one another to create the Olympics.

The accompanying art Bronny turned in as part of the assignment is neatly drawn and animated so that there are no crayon marks outside the contours of what he drew: a Black Trojan warrior with a red cape and galea on top of his battle helmet.

It’s almost eerie; six years after Bronny drew the picture he wound up playing basketball for the USC Trojans in his lone college season. But that’s not why Brown keeps it and shows it to her class each year.

She shares it as an example of good work from a child who could have ignored school and the people he met because of the fame and fortune he was born into, but didn’t.

“He’s a great kid — I miss him a lot,” Brown said.

Sarah Johnston was, and still is, head of school at Old Trail (like a principal). She has countless memories of Bronny, including the time she pulled him and his classmates out of a study hall, as she did from time to time, for a sojourn down to the school gym with the rubbery green floor for basketball.

Johnston still has the video on her phone. Bronny, a sixth grader, gets a jogging start from half court and dribbles toward a springboard which catapulted him into the air. Johnston, on both knees for the stunt, shrieked as Bronny skied over her for a dunk.

But she also remembers a class trip to one of the dozens of small parks on campus (Old Trail is the only school in the U.S. in a national park) when Bronny and his classmates were situated in a circle for some bonding exercises.

“You stepped into the circle if that’s something you relate to, you step out if it’s not, and I remember the teacher was like, ‘Who doesn’t have a cell phone?’ And everyone was like ‘Bronny,’” Johnston said in her office at Old Trail, a big smile across her face.

“He was like the last one to get a cell phone,” she continued. “I think LeBron and Savannah made really clear decisions about their kids having a lot of access to a lot of things, and they didn’t need that. … But the kids always had nice shoes though.”

Here are more stories of Bronny from the people who knew him at Old Trail.

They saw Bronny’s humility, grace and kindness while managing his celebrity.

Johnston: I ultimately think the lasting impression I had from this short period of time that I was with Bronny was that he was a natural leader. He was there not to show off his talents in ways that would make anyone else feel badly about themselves. He was there to pump people up and bring out the best in them. He wasn’t above anyone else.

Tim Weber, Bronny’s basketball and lacrosse coach at Old Trail: I remember being truly flabbergasted that a kid with the amount of attention he was getting was able to keep track of who had scored and who had not scored on our team and made sure that they got opportunities to do so. He did everything possible when he was in there to give everybody a shot and hopefully a bucket.

Johnston: I remember sitting in class one time with Bronny, and it was like a coding class. But there was this little kid next to him who was, I mean, very young and very tiny little guy or whatever, and they’re laughing and playing this coding thing together, doing their thing. I mean, he was certainly not someone who would elevate himself above anyone else.

Ronald Teunissen van Manen, Bronny’s former gym teacher, athletic director and soccer coach: When he was in sixth grade, we won the league championship in triple overtime thanks to Bronny. It was a Sunday morning, and it was an unbelievable game. But I remember that after the game was over, the opposing team came to Savannah and asked, ‘Can I get Bronny’s signature or can I get a picture?’ And I remember her saying, ‘You know what? You got to ask him.’ And they asked him, and that’s sort of from where I witnessed the first time that he had to deal with that end of things.

Brown: We were doing a cyberbullying curriculum, and we were talking about what social media (is) and things that you don’t share and information you don’t share. And he’s like, ‘Well, what if you have like four Instagram accounts that you didn’t start?’ And I was like ‘Oh, I have things I’ve never heard before.’ But that was his world, right?

Will Harding, Bronny’s teammate in basketball and soccer, who was one year ahead of him: Bronny showed maturity. He didn’t try and be the superstar. He knew how to share the ball. He knew he had other good teammates around him.

They saw the James family engage the school.

Johnston: The first time I met them, we have this back-to-school get together at the beginning of the year, and everyone comes in and you can get your books and your room and everything. They all came in kind of as a family. LeBron wasn’t there, but Savannah was, and I think her sister was with her. And Bronny came in carrying Zhuri, and they were all together and like, I just always remember them being such a unit, you know what I mean? I remember one time Bryce got hurt, like a playground or something. I remember he split his head open, and I was with him in the nurse’s office and he had glasses, so I think he hit his head and the glasses broke the skin. And we went and got Bronny, and Bronny came and sat with him, held his hand. That tightness, I think (Savannah) really drove a lot of that too.

Harding: LeBron was a really cool, good dad. He showed up to the school events we had. I remember one time you had to dress up as a book character and give a report on a book you read, and it was kind of a big thing. LeBron was at the school walking around just like a normal dad. He’d come to games like a normal dad. If you didn’t know basketball or if you were an alien or something and somehow didn’t know who he was, you would just think he was any other dad because he would be at our games, he’d be cheering everyone on, yelling at Bronny, yelling at Bronny’s friends and all of our teammates if they made a good play or if they did something funny.

Brown: I never met LeBron. I only saw him. I was doing crosswalk duty with my little stop sign. And I see this man coming in like, ‘Oh, he’s very tall.’ I did talk to Savannah quite a bit, like about work and that kind of stuff.

Johnston: I loved Savannah’s dad. He was at everything.

They saw Bronny play soccer, lacrosse and of course basketball. But also, the violin?

Harding: He was in the orchestra. I know that because I was in the orchestra. I think he played the violin. So it was just like another thing where he’s like, he’s just one of us.

Teunissen van Manen: I don’t think he had a huge amount of exposure to soccer prior to being on that team, but he just intuitively understood the game and he had the athleticism to back it up. He was a center forward; he was quite good. He was so fast, and especially in his first couple of steps, if somebody would send him the ball, at that point, he had already beaten his defender and all he had to do was touch it three more times and it would go in the goal. I don’t know what the number of goals were that season, but it was significant.

Weber: Bronny definitely took to lacrosse easily. And coaching lacrosse is very similar to coaching basketball, so I worked with him on a couple of fundamental moves. He was able to master them pretty much in a few practices, and that would get him in front of the goal. But, you know, his engine never stopped. He’d be getting ground balls off the field. He’d be chasing guys down from behind.

Harding: I know now the Lakers really like him for his defensive instincts. And I definitely could see that. He would go take out the other team’s best player when we were teammates. He would argue with some of our other better defenders saying, ‘No, no, no, I want to get on him. Let me guard him.’

Bronny James, left, poses for a photo with his Old Trail School basketball teammates. (Photo courtesy of Will Harding)

Weber: Bronny made it easy to coach him in basketball. When we played lesser competition, I certainly was not going to hold him out because that would have denied the opportunity for the kids that we were playing against, to go back to their friends and family and say, ‘Man, I played against Bronny James today.’ And even when Bronny was 10, 11 or 12 years old, I don’t need to tell you that (playing against him) was a big deal. He understood. I would certainly start him in the games, and then when it got lopsided pretty quickly, which it often did, depending who we were playing, I’d sit him in the second quarter, the entire quarter, and, you know, people would say, ‘My God, LeBron was at the game. How can you sit Bronny?’ I’m like, ‘Well, LeBron James knows that when you’re up 24 after one quarter, the game’s probably not in jeopardy.’

Teunissen van Manen: When Bronny was in seventh grade, the buzz in (the basketball gym) was pretty amazing. In that year, Bronny’s year, we had him and a couple of other very good players, and the place was packed. If we had charged a fee, we would have made a fortune.

Harding: It was me, three other eighth graders and then Bronny, and all of us ended up playing a Division I sport; Bronny was the only one that ended up playing basketball. I don’t think we lost a game.

Weber: He may have been a better free-throw shooter in fifth and sixth grade than his dad was at the time. He had great mechanics, wonderful follow through. Elbow in. Even back then he took pride in playing defense. But if somebody fell down, he would help the kid up, whether it was our team or somebody else’s team. He was just a real joy to work with.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Jesse D. Garrabrant, David Liam Kyle / NBAE via Getty Images; Ethan Miller, Cassy Athena / Getty Images)

NEW YORK — Dave Roberts stood atop a makeshift stage at Dodger Stadium eight days ago and gazed out at thousands celebrating all around the ballpark. He had screamed himself hoarse after winning the National League pennant, but the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers wanted one last pop from the crowd.

“Hey! You guys want a parade in Los Angeles?” Roberts asked. “Four more wins!”

After a 4-2 victory on Monday over the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the World Series, the Dodgers are on the doorstep of a championship, one far different than the title marred by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. The desire for a proper coronation has become a rallying cry for this group as it has approached a title. The triumph could come as early as Tuesday. The first World Series game at Yankee Stadium since 2009 ended as the last two did in Chavez Ravine, with the Dodgers exultant and the Yankees lamenting missed chances.

“You couldn’t ask for a better start in these three games,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We’ve got one more to go, though.”

On Monday, the Dodgers never trailed. Freeman smashed a two-run homer in the first inning. Walker Buehler limited the Yankees to two hits in five scoreless innings. Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt could not finish the third inning. He was jolted by Freeman’s early homer and subsequently ground down by the patience of the Dodgers.

FREDDIE FREEMAN, YOU ARE UNREAL. #WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/nmKvgGEMYQ

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 29, 2024

The Los Angeles bullpen held the line after Buehler exited. The relievers will be asked to handle all 27 outs in Game 4, while the Yankees will put their season in the hands of hard-throwing rookie Luis Gil. The situation looks grim for the Yankees and joyous for the Dodgers. No team in World Series history has overcome a 3-0 deficit. The hype last week has given way to reality: Only one club has demonstrated championship mettle thus far. Aaron Judge, the likely MVP and the captain of the Yankees, went hitless in three at-bats, in a game in which his teammates stranded eight runners.

“Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “But right now, it’s about trying to get a lead, trying to grab a game and force another one. But we’ve got to grab one first.”

After two tense nights in Los Angeles, no longer was this series kissed by the sun inside a stadium surrounded by palms. The difficulty of the sport, its capacity to injure and humble even its finest athletes, defined the discourse after Game 2. As fans piled into the Bronx for Game 3, there were two primary questions: Would Shohei Ohtani’s shoulder heal? And would Judge’s bat awaken?

Late in Game 2, Ohtani jammed his left arm into the dirt while attempting to steal second base. He writhed in pain and clutched his shoulder. An examination revealed a partial dislocation but no structural damage. He traveled apart from the team, but told the roster’s group chat he would not miss Game 3. He tested his shoulder during the day off on Sunday. Some swings hurt more than others. The medical staff determined Ohtani could play as long as he could tolerate the pain. He wore a heating pad over the shoulder during pre-game introductions and fist-bumped teammates with his right hand.

“If he is able to play, willing to play, he’s going to play,” Roberts said on Sunday afternoon. “Schmidt will know that Shohei’s in the box, so that means everything.”

Roberts was right. Ohtani did not need to swing the bat in his first plate appearance. He walked on four pitches to start the game. Standing at first, he held the collar of his shirt, as if wearing an invisible sling. He did not need to exert himself: Ohtani kept hold of the jersey on a leisurely stroll around the bases after Freeman pounced on a belt-high cutter for a two-run shot. He pinned his arm to his chest to discourage himself from sliding.

Judge received jubilant cheers during the intros. The crowd serenaded him with the garlands he is expected to receive for the second time next month: “M-V-P, M-V-P.” His inability to replicate his summer-long excellence in autumn has become a source of consternation for Yankees fans. Judge is batting .140 with three extra-base hits for the entirety of October.

A standing ovation greeted Judge in the bottom of the first. The good cheer lasted six pitches. Judge swung through a cutter for his seventh strikeout of the Series. The crowd had the decency not to jeer.

Ohtani did swing in his second appearance, chopping a grounder to the right side which advanced shortstop Tommy Edman to second base in the third inning. The extra 90 feet allowed Edman to display his base running acumen when Mookie Betts hit a flare into right field. Juan Soto charged toward the baseball, holding his glove aloft as if preparing for the catch. Edman disregarded the deke. He was running all the way, able to score with ease.

Buehler gave up his first hit in the fourth. Giancarlo Stanton, the towering designated hitter, pulled a sweeper into the left-field corner. Stanton lumbered into second for a one-out double. The defense bailed out Buehler. Betts dove to snag a well-struck liner from third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. When shortstop Anthony Volpe pulled a single into left, Teoscar Hernández came up throwing. Stanton had not even reached third base when Hernández gloved the baseball. Dodgers catcher Will Smith dropped a tag on Stanton’s midsection for a crucial third out.

“That was a big momentum play,” Buehler said. “For them to get a little momentum and us to shut it down was pretty cool.”

The play granted Buehler a reprieve. He was once one of baseball’s best young pitchers, a slender but cocksure budding ace who could bully hitters and outsmart them with equal élan. The past few years have not been kind to him. Before the game, Boone was asked about benching a left-handed hitter, catcher Austin Wells, when Buehler has struggled so much this year against left-handed swingers. “Righties have hit him pretty well, too,” Boone said. The assessment was tough, but fair. Buehler posted a 5.38 ERA during the season as he returned after missing most of the past two seasons recovering from a second Tommy John surgery.

Buehler flushed those failures in October. Performing at this time of year is “kind of the only thing I care about,” he said earlier this month. On Monday evening, he turned back the clock, resembling the pitcher he was before his most recent operation. He struck out five batters. His defenders were stout behind him. He pitched well enough to win. “It makes the regular season worth it, for me,” Buehler said.

The Dodgers sounded confident but measured after Game 3. They understood how close they were to a parade. They also understood the perils of impudence. Roberts, of course, played a crucial role on the 2004 Boston Red Sox, still the only baseball team to come back from a 3-0 deficit in any best-of-seven postseason series. A reporter asked Roberts about that as the clock turned to Tuesday morning.

“Don’t talk about that,” Roberts said. “Wrong guy. Way too early.” He added, “There’s got to be urgency. I don’t want to let these guys up for air.”

(Photo of Freddie Freeman: Luke Hales / Getty Images)

Stay informed on all the biggest stories in Formula One. Sign up here to receive the Prime Tire newsletter in your inbox every Monday and Friday.

MEXICO CITY — Carlos Sainz climbed on top of his vibrant red Ferrari, spreading his arms wide before raising his fists in the air.

The emotions were evident. The Spaniard started the Mexico City Grand Prix from pole, and though he lost the lead to Max Verstappen, Sainz regained first and put together one of the strongest drives of his Formula One career. His race engineer, Ricciardo Adami, called Sunday’s performance “a master class” over the radio at the end of the race.

Sainz is the first driver to win the Mexico City GP from pole in eight years and the first Ferrari driver to win the race since 1990 when Alain Prost accomplished the feat. This season is the first time Sainz has won multiple grands prix — the first in Australia 16 days after surgery and now here in Mexico.

Ferrari wasn’t good enough to be in the constructors’ title fight before summer break, but its recent upgrades have helped push the Maranello-based team to second in the standings with four races to go. It’s fair to say that Ferrari could be in the mix again in 2025 if things stay the course.

But it’ll be without Sainz.

“Honestly, I really wanted this one — I needed it for myself, I wanted to get it done,” Sainz said. “I’ve been saying for a while I wanted one more win before leaving Ferrari, and to do it here in front of this mega crowd is incredible.

“Now four races left, I want to enjoy as much as possible, and if another one comes, I will go for it.”

How the victory unfolded

Sainz had to work for his second victory of the season.

Verstappen took the lead after the grid barreled towards Turn 1, though that wasn’t surprising. Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is a low-grip track, and as the Ferrari driver noted, Red Bull tends to start well at these circuits. Verstappen stayed on the inside of Sainz heading into Turn 1, and though Sainz said he braked as late as he could, Verstappen did the same. This left Sainz with “no space to go into Turn 2.” Verstappen emerged with the early race lead.

Because of the early collision between Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda, the grid settled behind the safety car for several laps. Verstappen nailed the restart, but Sainz stayed in his rearview mirrors, never letting the Red Bull stray too far out of sight. He made his move on Lap 9.

“With Max, you need to be determined. You need to be decisive,” Sainz said. “If you’re not, you’re never going to pass him. And in that case, I think I caught him a bit by surprise, and I could make it stick.”

With some help from DRS and a tow, Sainz lunged past the Dutchman to re-secure a lead the Spaniard never relinquished. The Ferrari driver initially appeared too far back to make the move, but in the final 100 meters, Sainz said, “I felt like I had a good momentum, and I’ve been feeling very confident braking into Turn 1 this weekend. The car has been giving me confidence to brake late there, and I just went for it, and it happened. Also, this mentality of knowing I had a bit less to lose in that battle and that I could be aggressive and send one.”

He described it as a “high tension” moment because a chaotic battle unfolded between Verstappen and Lando Norris behind him. It resulted in the Red Bull driver receiving two 10-second time penalties, which he served on the first pit stop.

GO DEEPER

Max Verstappen’s Mexico GP penalties hurt. It won’t change how he races Lando Norris

Once Sainz regained the lead, roughly 60 or so laps remained. Plenty of action unfolded throughout the race, like Liam Lawson battling Sergio Pérez or Norris hunting Charles Leclerc in those final laps. Ahead of all of them, it appeared to be a rather problem-free race for Sainz aside from the report of a misfire. He said that was an “isolated incident.”

“The only misfire I had all race was at the exit of Turn 3. Landing after the curb, I did a little short shift and it gave me a misfire, which was a bit scary, but we’ve had them during the weekend and we know it’s due to the altitude and the mapping,” Sainz said. “But once I was in the lead, I was trusting my pace, my management, and I knew this weekend I’ve been very quick, and I knew I just had to do whatever I had planned, and the win was possible.”

Sainz retook the lead from Verstappen with a daring lunge into Turn 1. (Mark Thompson / Getty Images)

At around lap 49, Sainz also raised over the radio that he felt Ferrari was pushing too hard. It was a Prancing Horse 1-2 at the time, and Leclerc wasn’t far behind. The Monegasque driver, though, lost second in a battle with Norris. He lost the rear and nearly hit the barriers, saving it at the last moment.

It may not have been a Ferrari 1-2 in the end; however, the first and third-place finishes, plus Leclerc securing the fastest lap, was enough to launch the team ahead of Red Bull in the standings — a 25-point lead to be specific.

‘The perfect goodbye’

Sainz admitted he shed a tear as the Spanish national anthem played in celebration at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.

Just below the podium stood his parents, Carlos Sainz Sr. and Reyes Vázquez de Castro, and his partner, Rebecca Donaldson. His best friends also attended the race weekend, and all those present made this moment that much sweeter.

“It’s one of the best moments in my career. My mom had never been present on a race win with me, and the fact that she was coming here this weekend, I wanted really to win a race in front of her,” Sainz said. “On top of that, the way the whole weekend panned out, it was just perfect.

“Losing at the start and then having to fight back with Max just made everything a bit more tricky. Probably makes it taste even better because I had to work hard for it.”

Sainz celebrated with his father, family and friends after the race. (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

It has been a long year, not just for Ferrari but also for Sainz. News broke in February that Lewis Hamilton would join the team in 2025, leaving the 30-year-old without a seat despite being competitive among the top teams. It wasn’t until late July that the announcement came that Sainz would head to Williams Racing next season, a team trying to rebuild.

Meanwhile, Ferrari started the season competitively before falling into a tricky development stretch that saw it drop behind McLaren and Mercedes by summer break. It brought upgrades in Monza, and Leclerc won, but time would tell if it was a proper step forward. That confirmation came in Austin when Ferrari went 1-2, with Leclerc winning his third grand prix of the season.

Leclerc said that the constructors’ championship is “realistically possible.” Ferrari is 29 points behind McLaren, which leads the standings with 566 points. But as Sainz noted, the team will need to be consistent. Winning the constructors’ championship for the first time since 2008 would be the perfect sendoff for Sainz.

“I think it could have been quite easy for me to lose a bit of motivation and to lose a bit of the drive to make it happen, but those three weeks of break (after Singapore) served me well,” Sainz said. “I managed to regain a bit of the determination and the drive that I needed for these last five, six races of the season. And I managed to put myself in a position with improving my driving, my confidence with the car, to put myself in a position to, first, win in Austin that I didn’t make it happen — Charles did a great job there — and put myself in a position to win here and this one I was just going to make sure it doesn’t slip from my hands.

“Not an easy year, but proud of the way that I’ve managed to keep myself in it and obviously trying to help the team now as much as I can to win these constructors because it would be the perfect goodbye for me.”

(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

Deion Sanders’ Colorado will be playing in the postseason. In Sanders’ second season as head coach after taking over the worst power-conference team in college football, the Buffaloes (6-2, 4-1 Big 12) are bowl eligible after beating Cincinnati 34-23.

Colorado hasn’t played in a bowl game since it went 4-2 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The program hasn’t won a bowl game since 2004, and this season will mark its third bowl appearance since 2007.

Sanders has made frequent references this year to 99-year-old Colorado superfan Peggy Coppom and his promise to get her to a bowl game this season. The Buffaloes are eyeing more than just a bowl, too. Colorado is one of just four Big 12 teams with one or fewer conference losses, leaving it in the mix for the Big 12 title and one of the automatic bids to the 12-team College Football Playoff reserved for the five highest-ranked conference champions.

“I know Peggy. She’s got expensive taste. She don’t just want a bowl. She wants a bowl bowl. And I ain’t talkin’ about Manute (Bol),” Sanders told ESPN during the Buffaloes’ win.

Two-way star Travis Hunter re-entered the Heisman Trophy race with nine catches for 153 yards and two touchdowns on nine targets. He added four pass breakups and two tackles on defense, playing a total of 130 snaps. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders suffered a hip injury in the second half and received treatment on the sidelines but remained in the game, finishing 25 of 30 for 323 yards and two touchdowns through the air.

“It’s big for us because it’s big for the fans,” Shedeur Sanders said. “We’re not hitting our peak. We’re nowhere close.”

Under new defensive coordinator Rob Livingston, a first-time play caller, the Buffaloes have fashioned a respectable defense. They have also found a running game in recent weeks: last week’s win over Arizona (128 yards) and Saturday’s win (125 yards) were Colorado’s two most successful rushing performances of the season.

Sanders’ transfer-heavy approach to roster building has come under fire throughout his tenure, and the Buffaloes fell short of the postseason a year ago at 4-8 after a 3-0 start made them the biggest story in the sport. A year later, though, Sanders is seeing results.

Now, the Buffaloes have a chance to play into December. The last four games of the season — at Texas Tech, Utah, at Kansas and the home finale against Oklahoma State — will decide how high they climb.

GO DEEPER

Travis Hunter tracker: Colorado star re-energizes Heisman campaign with electrifying night

(Photo: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)

The date was November 24, 2018.

As referee Juan Martinez Munuera blew the whistle for full time, a disappointed Real Madrid team headed for the tunnel following a 3-0 La Liga defeat at Eibar, a game where Karim Benzema was flagged offside seven times, equalling a league record set by Elche’s Jonathas de Jesus in May 2015.

Nearly six years later, Kylian Mbappe, Benzema’s long-term replacement, went one better to make the unwanted record his own against another team in red and blue. Only this was in El Clasico in front of nearly 80,000 at the Bernabeu and millions worldwide as Real Madrid slumped to a 4-0 defeat.

Mbappe’s first Clasico was the subject of hype given he had six goals in four matches against Barcelona, including a hat-trick at Camp Nou. He also usually delivers in big games, with three goals in five matches against his current employers in the Champions League, four goals in two World Cup finals for France and 38 in 52 combined Ligue 1 games against Marseille, Lyon, Monaco and Lille.

On Saturday, Barca’s high line was expected to present him with opportunities if he and partner Vinicius Junior timed their runs, given their superior pace compared with Barcelona’s defenders.

A simple strategy on paper, but Mbappe struggled due to a combination of the occasion, an under-developed chemistry with his team-mates, and downright profligacy.

From kick-off on Saturday, Madrid’s approach was clear.

Their defenders would kick the ball up the pitch leaving Mbappe, Vinicius Jr and Jude Bellingham to win their duels.

If they lost the ball in the first phase, the physicality of Federico Valverde, Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga gave them the upper hand against Barcelona’s front six. All three Madrid midfielders can also play through the press with quick passes, and this combination of qualities troubled Barca through the first half.

The final pieces of the jigsaw were well-timed runs and assured finishing, but two offsides within the opening 90 seconds of the game suggested that was easier said than done.

The second of those saw Camavinga slip Mbappe in behind in the wide gap between Jules Kounde, wary of Vinicius Jr, and Inigo Martinez after Pau Cubarsi stepped up to close Camavinga down. Mbappe raced through, but his finish was poor as he dragged it wide.

In the next 12 minutes, Mbappe twice contributed without the ball, pressing higher than he has ever done this season to force Martinez to go long and help his team regain possession. He also brought down a long pass from Eder Militao before spraying it out wide to Vinicius Jr to kickstart an attack.

Mbappe’s keenness to contribute was evident and his off-the-ball work laid the foundations for his side’s approach to the game.

Then came the third offside, which indicated that he had not learned from the previous instances.

Vinicius Jr once again pinned Kounde on the right and, while Cubarsi did not push up, Mbappe found space between the two Barcelona centre-backs. Mbappe looked over his shoulder, but still began his run a tad too early from Camavinga’s pass.

He was flagged offside after squaring the ball for Bellingham, who forced a fantastic save from Inaki Pena…

More off-the-ball pressure on Martinez forced another Barcelona turnover before the most glaring of Mbappe’s eight offsides arrived in the 19th minute. In this instance, too, he looked over his shoulder but made a premature run to meet Bellingham’s hooked pass forward from the right wing.

Six minutes later, Barca trapped him offside yet again. On this occasion, Mbappe got himself back onside but kept watching the ball, meaning he did not notice Cubarsi taking an extra step forward. When Ferland Mendy played him in from the left, he was a few inches ahead of the back line.

Mbappe was getting closer to figuring it out, though, and seemed to have done just that on the half-hour mark.

A searching ball from Antonio Rudiger found Lucas Vazquez on the right flank. Mbappe was notably offside when Vazquez received the ball but tracked back as Alejandro Balde closed down the Madrid captain. A couple of touches later, Vazquez released Mbappe in between and behind the centre-backs, and he raced forward before finishing with a deft chip…

… only for Madrid’s joy to be cut short after a VAR check.

This was the closest of the lot as the semi-automated replay below suggests. Interestingly, Vinicius Jr seemed to have his doubts when the goal went in as suggested by his initial hesitance (watch above) to join the celebrations.

The marginal nature of the call suggests that Vazquez, who had time and space thanks to Bellingham’s positioning, could have played the pass earlier.

Three minutes later, another long ball from the home defence caused Barcelona problems. Mbappe won the one-v-one against Cubarsi and raced forward, only for Martinez to track back and flick the ball behind for a corner.

That was the striker’s final telling contribution of the half as the teams went into the break level.

Madrid had created openings but, as the expected-goals (xG) chart below shows, offsides had rendered them largely meaningless with their xG not too far away from Barcelona’s, despite the visitors creating little of note.

The second half offered Madrid a chance to build on their dominance and, four minutes in, Mbappe made a well-timed run from behind Cubarsi to latch onto a Vazquez pass on the counter. His first touch was slightly heavy, allowing Cubarsi to put the ball behind for a corner. But this was encouraging for the Frenchman and his side.

That optimism, however, evaporated quickly.

In the 54th minute, the first signs of issues with Mbappe’s pressing could be seen. A half-hearted attempt to stop Marc Casado allowed the Barca midfielder to saunter into space and thread the needle to find Robert Lewandowski in Barcelona’s first successful attempt to play through Madrid.

Lewandowski, onside due to Mendy’s poor positioning, was clinical with his finish. The visitors led 1-0.

Two minutes later, more tepid pressing high up the pitch and a neat Barcelona passing move — made possible by the composure of half-time substitute Frenkie de Jong — saw Lewandowski score again from a Balde cross.

Now 2-0 down, Madrid’s backs were against the wall, but they created nothing of note until the 61st minute when Mbappe conjured his first legitimate shot of the game. Receiving a pass from Camavinga on the left, he cut inside on to his favoured right foot before firing a low shot straight at Pena.

A second shot followed three minutes later, coming after another well-timed run by Mbappe between Cubarsi and Martinez. He latched onto Vinicius Jr’s outside-of-the-boot pass from the left wing to bear down on goal, but Pena came well off his line to narrow the angle.

Rather than taking it around or lifting it over him, Mbappe shot first time, and straight at Pena.

Mbappe’s involvement was growing, but his struggles with the offside trap returned in the 66th minute.

Following a miscontrol by Raphinha in Madrid’s defensive third, Vazquez found Valverde, who was immediately closed down by Dani Olmo. Mbappe remained offside during both these actions.

Valverde initially looks up to find Mbappe (as well as Vinicius Jr and Bellingham) still in an offside position, allowing Olmo to apply more pressure. With no other options, he played the only available pass: to the Frenchman. Mbappe went on to finish the move with a shot into Pena’s far corner but was glaringly offside once again.

Mbappe’s third and final shot of the match came in the 71st minute.

After Olmo lost possession in his own half, Luka Modric lifted the ball over the back line to find Mbappe, who timed his run on Martinez’s blindside to perfection to create another one-vs-one opportunity. This time around, Pena stayed closer to the edge of the six-yard box, daring Mbappe to beat him at either post.

Mbappe chose the far post, but his execution was poor as Pena saved once again without breaking a sweat.

Mbappe’s final involvement in the game came in the opening seconds of stoppage time in a near-perfect example of how Madrid envisioned their original game plan would play out.

Bellingham drew Cubarsi forward for a long ball, which travelled over both and into the path of Vinicius Jr. He comfortably turned Kounde on the halfway line before finding Mbappe on the left flank. Mbappe raced through and forced a near-post save from Pena but, thanks to a clever dart backwards by Martinez, Cubarsi could recover to re-lay the offside trap again.

The result? The assistant referee’s flag went up yet again, marking 12 infractions for the hosts and eight for Mbappe alone…

In between Mbappe’s final shot and final offside, Barcelona had scored twice. The first was a thunderous near-post effort from Lamine Yamal, partially reminiscent of Mbappe’s first goal from his Camp Nou hat-trick in 2021. The second was a deft chip by Raphinha, who easily broke Madrid’s final line of defence from a long ball after they committed men forward.

Those goals epitomised what Madrid needed from Mbappe on the night, but he could never put both together.

At times, the occasion and perhaps an eagerness to make an impact seemed to overcome him; at others, he simply did not display the confidence that many associate with his game, particularly in front of goal. Being on the wrong side of those margins does not go unpunished in fixtures as big as this.

There is also the question of synergy with his new team-mates, which will improve with time. The Barcelona match stands out due to the volume of offsides, but it is worth noting that Mbappe had been caught offside at least once in seven of his nine La Liga games before Saturday.

Mbappe’s frustration shows (Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images)

Madrid as a team have been caught offside only 24 times this season, and Mbappe has contributed 17 of those. Vinicius Jr was offside twice against Barcelona but only once previously all season. The Brazilian has been smart with his runs in the knowledge of when his team-mates will release the ball and the awareness that he can beat most defenders with his pace.

For this partnership to work on the biggest stages — particularly given the duo’s limitations in leading the press — Mbappe will need to develop a similar in-game intelligence on top of improved chemistry with his team-mates. He will also need to reduce his profligacy when the chances arrive, with his six league goals this season coming from an xG of 7.7.

Playing for Madrid was Mbappe’s ultimate dream. With that realised, the hardest part of the job begins now.

(Top photo: David Ramos/Getty Images)