Real now sit top on 21 points, two clear of Barcelona who visit Sevilla on Sunday. Villarreal are third on 16 points.<\/p>\n
The game was deadlocked in the early stages, but Real began to pile on the pressure as the clock ticked past 20 minutes.
\nAurelien Tchouameni rose to meet a cross, but his header drifted just wide of the post.<\/p>\n
Moments later, Mbappe pounced on a loose pass as the visitors tried to play out from the back. The Frenchman squared the ball to Franco Mastantuono, whose shot from point-blank range was deflected over the bar by defender Renato Veiga.<\/p>\n
Villarreal also had chances in the first half as Tani Oluwaseyi broke into the box and found himself one-on-one with goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who produced a sprawling save.<\/p>\n
Xabi Alonso’s Real side eventually broke the deadlock just after the break when Vinicius picked up the ball near the left byline, drove into the box and squeezed a shot in from a tight angle that deflected off Villarreal midfielder Santi Comesana.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian forward doubled his tally from the penalty spot in the 69th minute, having been brought down by Rafa Marin, with his effort just squeezing under goalkeeper Arnau Tenas.<\/p>\n
However, four minutes later Villarreal proved they had come to the Santiago Bernabeu to fight, as Georges Mikautadze pulled one back with a low strike from the edge of the box.<\/p>\n
The drama continued in the 77th when Villarreal defender Santiago Mourino was sent off after a second booking for a foul on Vinicius, leaving the visitors on the back foot.<\/p>\n
The impact was immediate as Mbappe scored Real’s third in the 80th minute after Brahim Diaz broke through and laid the ball back for the striker to complete the victory.<\/p>\n
Alonso, who this season has had to contend with Vinicius’ dissatisfaction a t his playing time in the Spanish manager’s rotation system, hailed the Brazilian international’s performance.<\/p>\n
“I really liked it, not just because of the goals. I’m happy for him. He had a decisive performance,” Alonso told reporters.<\/p>\n
“I like it when I see him smiling and enjoying himself. He was close to scoring a hat-trick ,” he said. ” It was a hard-fought, serious game. We had to wait for our moment. The first goal was difficult, but the team didn’t let up.”<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12764,"template":"default||default","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-12763","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr scored twice before a late finish from Kylian Mbappe wrapped up a 3-1 home victory over Villarreal, who finished with 10 men in Saturday\u2019s LaLiga clash.||Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr scored twice before a late finish from Kylian Mbappe wrapped up a 3-1 home victory over Villarreal, who finished with 10 men in Saturday\u2019s LaLiga clash.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr scored twice before a late finish from Kylian Mbappe wrapped up a 3-1 home victory over Villarreal, who finished with 10 men in Saturday\u2019s LaLiga clash.||Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr scored twice before a late finish from Kylian Mbappe wrapped up a 3-1 home victory over Villarreal, who finished with 10 men in Saturday\u2019s LaLiga clash.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18208,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12763\/revisions\/18208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=12763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}