TROY PARROTT came back to haunt Jose Mourinho as he condemned him to his first defeat as Real Madrid manager.
The Ireland ace came off the bench to score an 81st-minute winner for Real Betis against the Spanish giants.
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Mourinho had overseen a 100 per cent winning start to the season as Madrid kept pace with hated rivals Barcelona.
However, the first slip-up of the campaign came on Friday night against Betis as Parrott was quickest to react to a loose ball following a Thibaut Courtois save at a corner, and smashed home the winner into the roof of the net.
But Mourinho, 63, might have guessed such an event might happen given he handed Parrott his debut when he was manager of Tottenham.
Mourinho famously gave Parrott the match ball after his Premier League debut off the bench, a 5-0 win for Tottenham in 2019.
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A missed Kylian Mbappe penalty then added salt to the wounds for an awful evening for Los Blancos, as Parrott became only the second Irishman to score against Real Madrid after John Aldridge’s goals for Real Sociedad in 1989-90 and 1990-91.
On the winning goal, Parrott – in comments which would certainly please compatriot Roy Keane – told ESPN: “That’s a striker’s job, to go in after the ball and hope it will fall in front of me.
“In a game I might do this 10 times and it might not happen.
“So it’s a mentality thing to just keep going in there and hopefully it comes, and today it did.”
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Parrott would go on to have loans at Millwall, Ipswich, MK Dons, Preston North End and Excelsior before leaving Spurs permanently in 2024.
He joined Dutch side AZ, scoring 51 goals in 97 games before signing for Betis in a £17.1million (€20m) deal this summer.
Parrott’s match-winning goal, on his home debut no less, moved Betis level with Madrid on points and into the top three of La Liga before the rest of the league play their games this weekend.
Mourinho had a few sour grapes about the result, however, saying: “Sometimes you lose and you don’t know why, and sometimes you lose and you don’t know how to explain it.
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“We were in control for the most part, our defenders were fantastic and dominated everything, we did a lot of attacking work and created many scoring chances.
“If the match had ended in a draw, we would have left feeling frustrated because we did more, so imagine how we feel after the loss.
“I don’t know why we lost, and I can’t justify it, because the team played very well in all aspects.”
He sarcastically added: “I congratulate Real Betis, they played for the draw and came away with the big prize.”
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