Real Madrid CF 4-1 Real Sociedad de Fútbol: Primera Division Match Report, 26 August 2026

Level at half-time, settled comprehensively after it: Real Madrid CF 4-1 Real Sociedad de Fútbol, 1-1 at the break and 3-0 across the second half.

The first forty-five minutes did what Real Sociedad's record said they might. The visitors scored fifty-nine goals last season, a higher total than the side that finished sixth, twenty-two of them on the road, and they had scored in both meetings with these opponents during that campaign. A goal for them at the Bernabéu was never the unlikely part of this fixture. Containing what came back was.

Real Madrid finished second on 86 points with a home record of sixteen wins, one draw and two defeats, forty-five scored and sixteen conceded in nineteen matches — 2.4 goals a game at one end and less than one conceded at the other. Sociedad's road season was the mirror image: three wins, eight draws and eight defeats, twenty-two scored and thirty conceded, a side that plays open football and gets punished for it rather than one that closes a game down. Once the match reached the interval level and still open, the profile that shipped sixty-one goals last season had forty-five minutes in which to be examined.

We know the second half finished 3-0 and nothing further about how. That split, from a starting point of 1-1, is the whole of the result.

Six points from two matches for Madrid, who had already won 2-1 at Espanyol in the round played before this one, and none from two for Sociedad, beaten 1-0 at Real Betis in their opener. La Liga's opening rounds have been played out of order, so the table is a poor guide even by late-August standards.

What the result does not settle is anything about the distance between these clubs, which last season's final standings put at forty points. Madrid were second on 86; Sociedad tenth on 46 with a negative goal difference and three away wins in nineteen. A 4-1 at the Bernabéu is consistent with that and adds nothing to it. One smaller thing does carry forward: this is the same fixture that finished 4-1 last February, and on both occasions the visitors scored.

Our pre-match call was Real Madrid CF -1 (Asian Handicap) at 1.75. It was losing at half-time and comfortable by the end. The whole-goal line was chosen deliberately over one and a half because it returns the stake on a one-goal win, the outcome Sociedad's away scoring made most plausible; in the event that protection was not needed.

The four inputs behind the pick — the home record, the visitors' three wins, eight draws and eight defeats on the road, thirty conceded away, and a closing run of five matches without a win — all pointed the same way. The single argument against, that Sociedad score wherever they go, turned out to be correct as well. They scored, and lost by three. Verdict: won