Real Madrid's failure in Andalusia: a stallion's stumble or the start of a slide?

Mourinho will not get a long chance to catch his breath. Just a few days later, Real Madrid host Inter Milan to open their Champions League campaign on Tuesday 8 September. Then come Rayo Vallecano in the league on 12 September, a trip to Elche on the 15th, and the visit to the Metropolitano to face Atletico Madrid in the capital derby on 20 September.

The defeat to Betis, then, could hardly have arrived at a worse moment. The clash with Inter is no ordinary European night but a test against one of the continent's giants, and one that carries enormous significance for Mourinho in particular, having led the Italian side to the Champions League title in 2010. 

Four matches in 12 days lie ahead for Real Madrid, including that Champions League game and the Madrid derby.

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The hardest part is that Mourinho enters the clash with Inter while suffering a genuine crisis in midfield.

 Arda Guler, Eduardo Camavinga and Bernardo Silva are all absent, serving suspensions carried over from last season. Aurelien Tchouameni is still struggling with injury and has yet to begin his season.

By Mourinho's own admission, Fede Valverde has become almost the only first-choice midfielder available from the senior squad. That may force him to change the style of play or use players in unfamiliar positions.

Jude Bellingham heads the list of proposed solutions, although Mourinho prefers to deploy him behind the striker and close to the penalty area, given his goalscoring abilities.

The Englishman could become a logical option to drop back into midfield, with Brahim Diaz slotting into the playmaker role and the 4-2-3-1 formation staying intact.

Trent Alexander-Arnold also stands out among the options, after Mourinho previously used him in roles that give him freedom to move into deeper areas. The coach may resort to a 4-3-3, with Trent, Valverde and Bellingham in midfield.

Mourinho's first defeat during his first spell with Real Madrid stung. Barcelona thrashed them 5-0 at the Camp Nou on 29 November 2010.

That catastrophic collapse looked like the start of a crisis for the project. What followed was the complete opposite.

Real Madrid reeled off five straight wins. They beat Valencia 2-0, swept aside Auxerre 4-0 in the Champions League, saw off Real Zaragoza 3-1 and knocked out Sevilla 1-0, before rounding off the run with an 8-0 demolition of Levante in the Copa del Rey. Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo each grabbed a hat-trick that night.

A single defeat should not send Mourinho's new project to the guillotine, even if the loss to Real Betis stung and landed at a moment that leaves little room for calm.

Real Madrid did not lose their project in Andalusia. The perfect opening weeks have not become an illusion overnight. But the side received its first real warning: the road will not be paved with victories the way it seemed at the start.

This is where the character of the new Real Madrid will show itself. Great projects aren't measured only by the wins they rack up when everything goes to plan. They are measured by how they pick themselves up when things get complicated.

Can Mourinho turn the Betis defeat into a lesson? Can he cover the absences without the team losing its balance? And will Mbappé, Vinícius and the rest of the stars shoulder the responsibility of leading the response? The answers are still to come.

Come through the tough run of fixtures ahead, and the Andalusian night becomes a footnote rather than the start of a crisis. Beat the odds, and everyone will look back on it as the moment that proved this team's character.

 Repeat the mistakes, though, keep struggling against opponents, let the project's fragility show under its first real pressure, and the defeat to Betis turns into something far bigger than a stumble. It becomes the first sign that the rebuild is not yet finished, and that Mourinho's name alone cannot restore prestige to the Santiago Bernabéu.

Nobody can say yet whether Andalusia was a thoroughbred's stumble or the first step towards a fall. One thing is certain. The real test of Mourinho's project began after the final whistle against Betis, not before it.

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