Vinicius scored twice in the second half as Real Madrid beat Espanyol 2-0 at the RCDE Stadium on May 3, a result that delayed Barcelona's title coronation and left the league to be decided on the field.
The goals came in the 55th and 66th minutes and gave Real Madrid a 2-0 win in the 34th round, while the club also recorded its first clean sheet since the start of February. The victory kept Madrid's faint hopes in the La Liga title race alive and handed Barcelona at least a week more of suspense before the clubs meet directly.
The match began with Espanyol asking questions early. In the third minute Roberto Fernandez nearly put the hosts ahead when his close-range shot went wide, and Real Madrid forward Vinicius hit the post in the eighth minute as the opening period tilted between nervy defending and sharp, if inconsistent, chances.
Discipline briefly became the story in the 25th minute when Espanyol's Omar El Hilali was initially shown a red card for a foul on Vinicius. The dismissal was overturned after a VAR review and downgraded to a yellow, a reversal that left Espanyol with eleven men and left a flat seam of controversy across the first half.
After halftime Vinicius settled the contest. He opened the scoring shortly after the break by combining with Gonzalo Garcia to fashion the first goal in the 55th minute, and he struck again in the 66th minute when Jude Bellingham provided the assist for his second. Those two sequences cut through a match that had otherwise been defined by narrow margins and a handful of near misses.
For vinícius júnior the brace was the decisive intervention in a game where Real Madrid had offered little else in the way of attacking certainty. The team’s defense, by contrast, delivered a rare clean sheet — their first since February — and that balance proved enough to take all three points away from a stadium where Espanyol had been pressing for a lifeline.
Espanyol remained winless in 2026 and, with the loss, stayed under the shadow of relegation risk. The defeat did not produce the momentum Espanyol needed as the season winds down; for Real Madrid, the result was a measure of survival rather than celebration. League leaders Barcelona had been poised to celebrate a title with a Madrid slip-up, and instead must wait until the clubs meet again.
The calendar now points to the decisive moment: Real Madrid is due to face Barcelona in a direct matchup on the morning of May 11. That fixture will in effect become the coronation match if Barcelona win, or the stage for an improbable Madrid resurgence if the visitors prevail. The outcome of May 11 will determine whether this late-season reprieve becomes something larger or was only a temporary delay.
Real Madrid’s performance at the RCDE Stadium showed how fine the margins are — a post, an overturned red card, two second-half finishes — and it left the title race narrowed to a single headline event. The win buys time and gives Vinicius a starring role heading into the biggest league clash of the season.
