At least Kylian Mbappé is laughing.
LaLiga is back this week, and the prognosis is already looking bleak for Real Madrid. After seven games, they trail leaders Barcelona by six points, with a high-stakes Clásico to come at Camp Nou on Oct. 25.
Barça's record so far is played seven, won seven. They've got a +24 goal difference, they've got Lamine Yamal, and they've got Raphinha in career-best form. From a Madrid point of view, this could get ugly.
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But Mbappé looked carefree enough on Sunday as he posted a self-recorded video on social media, smiling while riding a bike in what looked like an idyllic country setting.
There was just one problem: his manager José Mourinho had mentioned cycling in an interview 10 days earlier, citing it as a specific example of the kind of hobbies footballers must not undertake, given their responsibilities.
"You cannot ride a bike," Mourinho said, categorically. "You fall off, and maybe you don't play three matches, or maybe worse, you break a leg ... There are a lot of things you have to give up to be a football player."
Was Mbappé unaware of Mourinho's comments? Was this just an unfortunate coincidence? Or was there some other, as-yet unknown intent behind Mbappé's post, a message being sent? We'll hear Mourinho's response on Friday, as he speaks to the media the day before Madrid's game with Villarreal at the Bernabéu (stream LIVE 10/10 at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN+ in the U.S.).
In the meantime, Mbappé's off-field activities might not even rank among Mourinho's biggest worries this week as he works with his players on the training pitches at Valdebebas.
Mourinho has only been back at Madrid for three months. Now he has a run of five games -- Villarreal (home) on Saturday, AS Roma (away) on Oct. 14, Sevilla (home) on Oct. 18, RB Leipzig (home) on Oct. 21 and then Barcelona (away) four days later -- to get Madrid's season back on track, or risk derailing his project entirely.
So, what's on Real Madrid's to-do list ahead such a potentially season-defining set of fixtures?
Find Vinícius Júnior's best form
In eight Real Madrid games this season, Vinícius Júnior has scored just one goal, a close-range tap-in against Real Sociedad on Aug. 26. And when you look at the numbers, it gets even worse.
Take his personal, expected goal tallies against Espanyol (0.04 in 90 minutes), Málaga (0.04 in 90 minutes), Inter Milan (0.1 in 87 minutes), Rayo Vallecano (0.15 in 89 minutes) and Atlético Madrid (0.06 in 54 minutes).
Vinícius hasn't been scoring goals; he hasn't even looked like scoring goals. He's struggled to get into dangerous positions, and he's failed to convert on the rare occasions that he has.
"Physically [Vinícius] is better than ever, he needs just a millimetre to get to his top speed," Mourinho insisted last month. "Mentally he's very strong ... Right now it's about assists, and understanding the defensive side [of the game], and the goals will come."
That was after the Rayo game on Sept. 12. In the two matches since, Vinícius scored no goals, and provided no assists. In the defeat at Atleti on Sept. 20, he touched the ball just 22 times -- the fewest of any player on the pitch except Atlético's Jonathan David -- and was substituted when Madrid were reduced to 10 men.
Xabi Alonso dropped Vinícius last season, and then he lost his job, partly as a consequence. Since then, Vinícius has signed a new, long-term contract until 2032. Mourinho is obliged to keep the faith, and keep working to find Vinícius' lost form and confidence.
Tighten up Madrid's defence
In eight LaLiga games, Madrid have kept just one clean sheet, in the 4-0 home win over Málaga on August 30. But Málaga aren't exactly pure goal threat: they're the division's lowest scorers, with three goals all season.
Otherwise, Madrid have been leaking goals, in moments which have made their lives needlessly difficult. Espanyol's equalizer in Madrid's opening game of the season meant they needed a last-gasp, 90th-minute strike from Carlos Espí to win 2-1. Conceding two goals in 12 minutes at Elche meant another added-time winner from Espí was required, to salvage a 3-2 win.
At Atlético in the derby, the circumstances were different -- Atleti needed a penalty to break the deadlock, after Dean Huijsen was sent off -- but Madrid's defence was still sliced wide open for the incident which saw Huijsen dismissed, and again for the home side's second goal.
Atlético made a point of repeatedly targeting Madrid's left-hand side of Vinícius and Marc Cucurella, a gameplan confirmed by coach Diego Simeone post-match. Simeone knew Cucurella would be exposed defensively, and his team took advantage.
Madrid signed three defenders this summer in Cucurella, Ibrahima Konaté and Denzel Dumfries. That came a year after adding Huijsen, Álvaro Carreras and Trent Alexander-Arnold, a total defensive spend in two summers of almost €200 million (Alexander-Arnold and Konaté were free transfers).
So far, there's been little visible improvement in the team's defensive solidity. It's still too early to judge this year's arrivals; but Huijsen, while talented, has often been found wanting, and the signings of Cucurella and Dumfries are effectively an admission of a lack of faith in Carreras and Alexander-Arnold.
Mourinho has suggested Madrid's problem is more offensive than defensive.
"In games that seem like they're done, we have three, four, five chances to kill it, and we don't," he said last month, after they'd thrown away a two-goal lead at Elche. "When it seems easy ... They get a goal, and it's an open game. The good thing is that in difficulty, the team reacts."
Row back on conspiracy talk
It's been no surprise to hear Mourinho vocally criticising key refereeing decisions which have gone against his team. The only shock has been how far, and fast, he's veered toward conspiratorial rhetoric.
"The poor guy couldn't cope with the pressure," Mourinho said about referee Miguel Ángel Ortiz Arias -- who decided against showing red cards to two Atlético players at 0-0 -- after the Madrid derby. "Congratulations to the [Spain's technical refereeing committee] CTA ... I thought I'd find a different league to the one I left, and I was told, 'No.'
"I don't want to say this was prepared," he added, while implying very much the opposite. "I want to think they were mistakes."
Mourinho's complaints about those crucial derby decisions, emphasised by photos he'd hurriedly printed out to brandish in his postmatch news conference, were legitimate. The CTA itself admitted in its weekly review that Ortiz Arias should have sent off Kang-In Lee for his foul on Federico Valverde. But it wasn't the first time this season that Mourinho had protested so loudly while hinting at conspiracies, and he hasn't always had the evidence -- in convenient, A4 form -- to back it up.
"No questions about the penalties? Strange, isn't it?" he asked journalists last month, after a weekend of controversial decisions involving Madrid's title rivals Barça and Atlético.
When Mbappé wasn't allowed a second attempt at a missed penalty in Madrid's loss at Real Betis on Sept. 4, despite apparent encroachment by defender Marc Bartra, Mourinho said VAR Javier Iglesias "didn't know the rules."
He asked: "Why didn't the VAR let the penalty be retaken?. If it's because he doesn't know the rules, he should go home and not be a VAR. If he didn't want to, that's even worse."
The CTA later confirmed that Bartra had not, under IFAB's guidelines, been encroaching. It wasn't the VAR who didn't know the rules.
Get the Bernabéu crowd onside
After two seasons without a major trophy, Madrid's fans are understandably growing restless. As a result, they've frequently whistled the team, with particular venom reserved for underperforming stars like Vinícius, and even Mbappé.
But there was an expectation, or perhaps a hope, that the return of Mourinho after 13 years away would persuade the Bernabéu crowd to give the team one more chance.
So far, there's been little sign of patience. During a 2-1 win over Inter on Sept. 8 -- a game which, it's worth repeating, Real Madrid won, against the reigning Italian champions, and UEFA Champions League finalists in two of the last four seasons -- there were loud whistles for both Vinícius and Mbappé when they were substituted.
Madrid won, but they didn't convince, with the balance of play often heavily in Inter's favour, especially in the first half.
And back to Mbappé. For all his goals -- seven in LaLiga this season, 25 last term, and 31 before that -- there are some fans who now doubt not his quality, but his commitment to the cause.
Pictures of Mbappé holidaying on a yacht last May, as he recovered from a hamstring injury -- with the season ongoing and Madrid fighting desperately to stay in the title race -- were deeply unhelpful from a PR point of view. Being photographed on a night out in Paris last week, after injury ruled him out of France's remaining games during this international break, didn't help either.
If the fans can't get behind Mbappé, who has, at least, been a relentlessly prolific goal-scorer since arriving at the Bernabéu, what chance do the rest of the team have?
Mourinho's arrival was supposed to help solve Madrid's problems last season, both on- and off-field, providing tactical clarity and much-needed authority.
This month's games leading up to the Clásico will help tell us if he's any closer to finding the answers, or if the wheels are coming off already.