The Santiago Bernabéu barely had time to settle before the game was gone. Inside 35 minutes Real Madrid had scored three, played with the swagger of a side that knows exactly what it is, and left Rayo Vallecano chasing shadows across a sunlit afternoon. By the time Kylian Mbappé lashed in his second in stoppage time, the 4-1 scoreline felt less like a contest and more like a demonstration.

This was Madrid at their most ruthless — clinical from the spot, sharp in the box, devastating on the break. Rayo, to their credit, refused to fold entirely and briefly threatened to make a game of it after the interval. But the gulf between the sides was written all over the first half, and no amount of second-half spirit could rewrite it.

For a Rayo Vallecano side still searching for solid ground near the foot of the table, the Bernabéu was always likely to be an unforgiving stage. So it proved. They leave the capital's grandest stadium with another defeat and another fistful of goals conceded, their early-season struggles laid bare against opponents in a different class.

Early avalanche

The opening was brutal in its efficiency. On 14 minutes Madrid won a penalty and Mbappé did what he always seems to do, stroking the spot-kick low into the bottom-right corner with the calm of a man who had already decided the outcome. The Bernabéu roared, and Rayo had barely touched the ball.

Three minutes later it was two. Mbappé turned provider, and Álvaro Carreras arrived in the centre of the box to steer a left-footed finish into the bottom-left corner. The full-back's goal was a reward for Madrid's relentless width and movement, and it turned an early lead into something closer to a rout in the making.

By the 35th minute the tie was effectively over. Vinícius Júnior did the damage down the flank and picked out Jude Bellingham, whose right-footed strike from the centre of the box nestled into the bottom-right corner. Three goals, three different scorers, and a home crowd purring at the sheer ease of it all. Rayo could only regroup and hope to salvage some pride.

A flicker of defiance

Rayo Vallecano did at least emerge from the interval with fight in them. Six minutes after the restart Sergio Camello gave them a foothold, cutting in from the right side of the box and finishing low into the bottom-left corner. For a moment the away end dared to dream of an unlikely comeback, and the tempo of the contest shifted.

It was a goal that spoke to Rayo's better qualities — the willingness to run at a superior side, the refusal to simply accept their fate. Camello's strike deserved more than to be a footnote, and for a spell it injected genuine urgency into a match that had threatened to drift into an exhibition.

But Madrid have too much experience to be rattled by a single goal. They absorbed Rayo's brief surge, tightened their grip on possession and gradually returned the game to their own terms. The three-goal cushion afforded them a comfort that Rayo, chasing the game, simply could not match. The visitors' revival flickered and then faded.

The finishing touch

The final word, fittingly, belonged to Mbappé. Deep into stoppage time Madrid broke at pace, Arda Güler carried the ball forward and slid it to the Frenchman, who swept a right-footed finish into the bottom-left corner. It was a goal born of a fast break, the kind of clinical counter-attacking that has become a hallmark of this team, and it sealed both the scoreline and his brace.

There was something emphatic about the timing. Rather than see out the game at walking pace, Madrid went hunting for a fourth, and Güler's assist rounded off an afternoon of controlled aggression. Mbappé's second underlined his growing centrality to everything good this side does in the final third.

For Madrid the numbers now read four wins and a defeat, twelve points, and a goal tally of fourteen for and just four against. Sitting second in La Liga, they carry the look of a side gathering momentum, their attacking riches on full display and their sharpness in front of goal a warning to everyone above and below them.

Roads diverging

The table tells its own story. Real Madrid climb the standings with the confidence of a team that expects to be there, their only blemish so far a solitary defeat that this performance did much to consign to memory. The forward line looks fearsome, the goals are being shared, and the platform for a serious title challenge is being laid brick by brick.

Rayo Vallecano, meanwhile, remain mired in 15th on four points, a single win from five outings and fourteen goals already conceded. Their record of one win, one draw and three defeats paints a side scrapping for survival rather than dreaming of anything grander. The eight goals they have scored suggest they are not without threat, but the leaks at the back are the problem that must be plugged.

There was no shame in losing at the Bernabéu, and Camello's goal offered a reminder that this Rayo side can hurt opponents when given the chance. Yet the manner of the first-half collapse will trouble them far more than any consolation. They must dust themselves down quickly, because the margin for error at the bottom of La Liga is already growing thin.

For Madrid, the message is simpler still: keep this up and few will live with them. The Bernabéu emptied happy, the forwards left smiling, and a season that briefly wobbled now feels firmly back on course. Rayo were merely the latest to discover how quickly this team can turn a match into a procession.