The La Liga title race is alive. Just as the world was ready to write the season off before Halloween, Real Madrid go and win at Camp Nou to make things interesting again.

El Clásico rarely fails to deliver on drama and Barcelona’s nine-match winning run came to an abrupt and unexpected end on Sunday, as Kylian Mbappé’s double cut the gap at the top to just three points.

While it is just one game, it’s a result that flips the script in La Liga, with Barça no longer seen as an unstoppable, runaway train careering towards their third straight title. Madrid, by contrast, have gone—overnight—from appearing disorganized and chaotic to controlled and clinical.

Amid a sea of narratives from Spanish soccer’s biggest league fixture, here are the winners and losers from the game.

Winners

José Mourinho

Mbappé’s goals stole the headlines but the night was all about Mourinho. The 63-year-old cuts a different figure from the last time he helmed a Clásico—he is older, whiter and newly bearded—but he seemed to pick up right where he left off in 2013.

Mourinho is now unbeaten in his last six Clásico encounters and relishes the occasion to get under the skin of the Catalan giants like nobody else in the business.

While many predicted spite and conspiracy theories from the manager pregame, it was his tactics that stole the show.

Mourinho opted for Federico Valverde at right back and Bernardo Silva in the middle, while setting up a team that could limit the spaces and counterattack at speed.

The manager revealed after the game that Camavinga’s dart for Madrid’s winner was part of his instructions to the midfielder as he identified that Barça struggled with picking up runners from deep.

Kylian Mbappé

Now on 100 goals for Real Madrid—only Cristiano Ronaldo and Ferenc Puskás acheived the milestone for Los Blancos in fewer than Mbappé’s 116 games.

It’s a truly remarkable return for the Frenchman. With Lamine Yamal skewing his best chance, Mbappé stepped up as the man for the big occasion.

The Frenchman is now on 14 goals from 11 appearances against Barcelona—making them his second-favorite opponents by number of career goals, second only to Montpellier (15).

Marc Cucurella

It’s been a so-so start for Marc Cucurella who was reportedly handpicked by Mourinho to fix Madrid’s fullback issues at the start of the summer.

The swashbuckling, two-way defender has rarely been able to show off his World Cup-winning best in his early Madrid outings and has been rotated with Álvaro Carreras in the early months of the season.

Sunday night, returning to the club he came through as a youth teamer, was Cucurella’s arrival as a galáctico as he shut down Lamine Yamal out on the wing.

The summer signing completed 95% of his passes and made 12 defensive contributions, while pushing every boundary available as took a phsyical approach to Barça’s elite attackers.

Mourinho praised Cucurella after the match, saying: “It was a great team effort, but it's probably the toughest match Cucu has had, and he came out on top against a very good player [in Lamine Yamal].”

Losers

Lamine Yamal

If the match was being billed as Mbappé vs. Yamal pregame, it was Barça’s No. 10 who lost the battle of the superstars.

As it also was last week against Paris Saint-Germain, the teenager was short of his bottled-lightning best and struggled up against his international teammate Cucurella.

While he eventually came alive to produce a moment of magic against PSG, no such turning point arrived at Camp Nou with Yamal skewering his best chance wide just before halftime.

He finished the match with the msot touches in the opposition box (11) and dribbles (4) but couldn’t provide the all-important final touch and didn’t register a single shot on target.

Gerard Martín

It was an evening to forget for defender Martín, who was responsible for gifting Madrid their opener as his bizarrely poor clearance cannoned back of the oblivious Mbappé and past Joan García.

Neither of Barça’s center backs were at their best, but Martín’s display in particular has put the spotlight back on old questions of whether La Blaugrana have enough defensive depth to compete at the very highest level.

The converted left back didn’t win a single ground duel on Sunday, while Spanish outlet Cadena Ser wrote after the match that Martín “deserved to be sent to the fourth tier” for his costly error.

He did, however, almost atone for his mistake with a second-half header that forced a world-class save from Andriy Lunin.

Vinícius Júnior

Some players grow more important in their absence. Vinícius Jr is not currently one of those players.

Following the 5–1 rout of Sevilla last week, the rest of the Madrid team continued to do fine without the suspended Brazilian in Catalonia, while Yan Diomande and Arda Güler look more and more like undisputed starters.

In Diomande, who began the match in Vinícius Jr’s left-wing spot, Madrid have a dribbling machine and terrific out-ball, who doesn’t appear to overlap with Mbappé’s runs.

The 19-year-old Ivorian didn’t stop running all night and, while he didn’t add to his six goal contributions in five games, he is the speedy, confidence winger Madrid have been missing.

Federico Valverde

Almost exactly one year ago, Valverde was kicking up a stink about playing right back away at Kairat Almaty under Xabi Alonso. Now, he has accidentally become Mourinho’s first choice in the position.

The veteran coach seemingly has limited trust for Denzel Dumfries and less for Trent Alexander-Arnold, making the Uruguayan his defacto stand in.

Speaking after the match Mourinho also seemed to hint that the days of a Aurélien Tchouaméni-Valverde pivot were over, after Bernardo Silva—and later Eduardo Camavinga—shone with a more creative interpretation of the engine-room role.

To add injury to insult, Mourinho also revealed that Valverde picked up a knock in the win and played through the pain before coming off after an hour.