Kylian Mbappe endured an off night for Real Madrid as they slumped to a 1-1 draw with Girona that might see the title fade away for good. Federico Valverde’s second half strike was countered by a Thomas Lemar goal to see the spoils shared at the Santiago Bernabeu. Los Blancos could trail Barcelona by nine points – with seven games to go – if their bitter rivals win on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Madrid were in control for much of the first half. Alvaro Arbeloa made changes at the back, but kept his main men in attack – and they created in bunches. Vinicius came close repeatedly, only to be denied by Paulo Gazzaniga. Mbappe, meanwhile, was inconsistent – and repeatedly failed to connect in front of goal. Girona had their forays on the break here and there, but a couple of neat stops from reserve goalkeeper Andriy Lunin kept them out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet it was a goalkeeping error that changed things. Valverde unleashed a rather speculative strike, which Gazzaniga failed to deal with. Girona worked their way back into the game, though. Thomas Lemar leveled things on the hour mark, smashing the ball past a helpless Lunin after finding himself far too open at the top of the box. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Los Blancos responded with a series of changes. But Girona were otherwise happy to sit on the result. Mbappe had one last chance, yet fired right at the goalkeeper – a moment that rather encapsulated a disappointing night in Madrid. They will need a miracle to hunt down Barcelona in the title race now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GOAL rates Real Madrid’s players from the Santiago Bernabeu…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kylian Mbappe endured an off night for Real Madrid as they slumped to a 1-1 draw with Girona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[418,84,416,85,82,417,83,86],"class_list":{"0":"post-400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-features","9":"tag-girona","10":"tag-k-mbappe","11":"tag-laliga","12":"tag-madrid","13":"tag-player-ratings","14":"tag-real-madrid","15":"tag-real-madrid-vs-girona"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}