The dust is finally settling in as the fans with Real Madrid tickets are finally finding ways to look at life after a disappointing week after losing to Barcelona 4-0 and Vinicius Jr. not winning the Ballon d’Or.

It wasn’t the week the Los Blancos fans hoped to see, but they must come to terms with it and look forward to the future.

Keeping the chatter away from the field, fans with Real Madrid tickets now see the pitfalls in their superstar team after their infamous defeat at their home against arch-rivals Barcelona.

It wasn’t just a defeat but a showcase of the areas the club needs to improve drastically to have a successful season.

Despite the different challenges on the field, those with Real Madrid tickets cannot ignore the concurrent issues against their star player, Kylian Mbappe.

Mbappe Still Needing Time

The Spanish club isn’t new to superstar signings. In the past, they’ve bought key figures in world football, including Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, and now, the most recent French superstar, Kylian Mbappe.

Fans expected a massive turnaround from the kick-off whistle, a dream come true for Mbappe, who has had ambitions of someday wearing that prestigious white jersey.

The thousands of fans with Real Madrid tickets who joined him at his unveiling thought he would exceed expectations. But it hasn’t been Mbappe’s dream start, and the Barca game raised a few red flags.

Mbappe has eight goals and two assists in 14 appearances for Real.

That’s a solid start for a player adapting to a new country – but this club refused to attend the Ballon d’Or ceremony when it became apparent one of their players wouldn’t win.

Taking Shots at Goal

Mbappe has taken the most shots of any player in Europe’s major leagues this season, but his finishing has been mediocre. Take away the three penalties he’s scored in La Liga, and it gets even worse.

Without those penalties, Mbappe’s shot conversion rate lags way behind his peers—especially Lewandowski and Bradley Barcola, who are currently making a great fist of replacing Mbappe at PSG.

In Mbappe’s defense, he is the third-highest scorer in Spain, albeit with eight goals behind Lewandowski.

Unfortunately, Barcelona has a player enjoying such an incredible late-career run—but welcome to the Bernabeu. The fans with Real Madrid tickets and the rest of the fanfare don’t like being outdone by Barca.

So how did Barca outdo Mbappe?

One way is to drop deep and give him nothing to run into. The other—riskier—way is to push up and let the assistant referee help. That’s what Barcelona did.

Mbappe was caught offside eight times in El Clasico – the most times a player has been flagged in a major European league game since Chievo’s Sergio Pellissier in December 2013.

Part of that is down to Barcelona’s remarkable offside trap—there have been 77 offsides in La Liga this season, 32 times more than any other team in Europe.

But even if you removed El Clasico from the record (as Real would no doubt like to), Mbappe would still be La Liga’s second most-flagged player.

Only two other players have been offside as often throughout this season as Mbappe was on Saturday.

This won’t be Mbappe’s biggest issue—few teams will be as brave as Barcelona—but there are early signs that it will have an impact.

Last season, Real scored nearly a quarter of their league goals from counter-attacks and through balls—situations where you’d expect Mbappe to thrive—but so far this term, they’ve scored only one of each.

Too Many Superstars?

A star-studded outfit that achieves invincible status is what everyone with Real Madrid tickets was expecting to see this season. But Mbappe could have done better with other superstars on his team.

The Madrid team isn’t the first time Mbappe has had to learn to play with other superstars. Do you remember Messi and Neymar’s days at PSG? The difference is that back then, Mbappe was the young up-and-comer.

Now he’s an established global icon, a World Cup winner, and one of the few players on Earth who can justifiably walk into Real Madrid’s dressing room and expect his new team-mates to adapt to him.

So far, that’s happening. Vinicius Junior was Real’s top scorer last season, scoring 24 goals in 39 appearances, but in the Mbappe era, he’s playing more of a creator. Goals, shots, and touches in the opposition box are down.

Jude Bellingham’s role has changed, too. Last season, he scored 19 league goals; this time around, he’s yet to score in the league. This is not so surprising when you consider he’s far less active in the final third this season. Bellingham looked like world-class material to most of the fans who witnessed him firsthand with Real Madrid tickets, and now it feels like his services are tightened, and he has less space to play the attacking midfielder game he nurtured last season.

Last season, Vinicius Junior, Bellingham, and Rodrygo combined to take 9.4 shots per 90 minutes in La Liga. This season, that’s down to 6.2. Mbappe has made Real more predictable.

Are We Expecting Too Much?

Mbappe has yet to make a terrible start, but is it enough in a Real Madrid team?

He has six goals in 10 league appearances – Ronaldo scored seven in his first ten league appearances for Real.

Saturday wasn’t the first time in recent years that El Clasico has thrown up a heavy home defeat for either team. And you can hardly say that a man who scored two penalties in a World Cup final – three if you include the shoot-out – can’t deal with pressure.

But that’s life at Real Madrid.

History has shown that superstar players who went to Real Madrid as superstar signings fumbled and eventually opted to move out or retire. The classic case for this is Eden Hazard, Madrid’s star signing from a few years ago, who is now retired when he had so much football left to play.

The fans with Real Madrid tickets hope that Mbappe finds his rhythm and will spend a bit more time with him to do so. Come to the return leg of the El Classico, if Mbappe doesn’t deliver, it might be a disappointing conversation.