How Jose Mourinho seeded Real Madrid's defeat to Real Betis seven years ago

Jose Mourinho's flying start to his second spell as Real Madrid head coach shuddered to a halt on Friday evening as Real Betis claimed a 1-0 win at La Cartuja.

Madrid won each of their first three La Liga matches, putting four goals apiece past Real Sociedad and Malaga heading into their trip to Seville.

But Mourinho's men came up short against a Betis side led by his old foe Manuel Pellegrini, as Kylian Mbappe had a late penalty saved to compound their misery.

The headlines were stolen by another figure from Mourinho's past.

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Troy Parrott gives Betis famous win over Real Madrid

The decisive moment came nine minutes from time, when Republic of Ireland striker Troy Parrott slammed a rebound high into the net after Thibaut Courtois brilliantly kept out Nelson Deossa's header from Pablo Fornals' right-wing corner.

It was some way for Parrott to announce himself with his first La Liga goal. Betis signed the 24-year-old after he scored 20 times across the past two seasons with AZ in the Dutch Eredivisie.

However, Parrott came through the youth ranks at Tottenham, where he was handed his Premier League debut in 2019… by Jose Mourinho.

What did Jose Mourinho say about Troy Parrott?

An injury crisis Spurs left Parrott as Mourinho's only fit striker in March 2020, but he resisted clamour to select the young Irishman and cautioned that he should not think he was "too good" to play for the Under-23 side.

"I told him: 'Every time you play with the kids of your age, you have to show your colleagues why you are the privileged one.’ Because it was something he was not doing," Mourinho said. "Every time he was playing with the kids, he was playing with the mentality of, ‘I shouldn’t be here’ or, ‘I am too good to be here.’

“Troy cannot go there [the under‑age teams] with discontent, contempt. It is a process. So everything goes very, very well. But this is a world where lots of people don’t even know if Troy has long hair or short hair, or is blond or is dark. They don’t even know that and they speak about Troy, Troy, Troy. There was a guy behind me on the bench the other day: ‘Play Troy, play Troy.’ I don’t think he knows Troy.”

The coronavirus pandemic arrived shortly afterwards, ending Parrott's immediate first-team opportunities, and the following season he joined Millwall in the first of a succession of loan moves.

Speaking to Millwall's official website in late August 2020, Parrott insisted he had no hard feelings over Mourinho's words and took them as positive guidance.

"To be fair, he’s such an experienced manager and he’s done nearly everything in the game, so if he feels like that’s right then there must be some truth in it and I had to take it on the chin," he said.

"I knew I just had to keep my head down in training and keep working hard. And getting this loan now is hopefully going to help me improve and push on. There were little conversations that were being had. I was speaking to coaching staff and players finding out what I needed to do to be better.

"Because obviously Mourinho has worked with some of the best strikers there’s ever been, to get advice off him was great. I knew what I needed to do. It was helpful advice."

It was advice that came home to roost as Parrott landed an early blow against Madrid and Mourinho's La Liga title ambitions.