Baena Rifles Home an 89th-Minute Winner as Atletico Madrid Beat Espanyol 1-0

CORNELLA, SPAIN · SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026

For 88 minutes at RCDE Stadium on Saturday, this looked like the afternoon Atletico Madrid's winning run came to die. Diego Simeone's side had the ball, the shots, the corners and the territory, and none of it mattered, because Espanyol goalkeeper Angel Fortuno kept saying no. Then Julian Alvarez, who had been denied twice himself, slipped a pass to the substitute standing next to him, and Alex Baena rifled it into the top-left corner in the 89th minute. Espanyol 0, Atletico Madrid 1: a sixth consecutive win in all competitions for Atleti, a fifth straight in La Liga, and three points taken the Simeone way — late, narrow, and with the other team's goalkeeper entitled to feel robbed.

The bare facts are agreed everywhere the match was recorded. SoccerNews, carrying Stats Perform's reporting, and OneFootball's fixture page both close the book at 1-0, scoreless at half-time, with Baena scoring in the 89th minute from Alvarez's assist. Sportradar's match record for this Matchday 9 fixture shows the same: a blank first period and a single second-half goal. Flashscore's live tracker noted the same late twist in real time, calling it a big win to open Saturday's La Liga schedule. Where the reports add texture, they agree on that too: this was a siege that took until the penultimate minute of normal time to break through.

Fortuno's afternoon

Start with the man who nearly stole the point. Fortuno made five saves, and the quality rose as the stakes did. In a quiet first half his one real test came from Jonathan David, whose shot from a tight angle he pushed wide. Just after the hour, Marcos Llorente let fly with a fierce effort and Fortuno tipped it against the top of the crossbar — the closest either side came before the winner, woodwork and goalkeeper sharing the save. In the closing stages he smothered another David chance and then denied Alvarez twice, the second a brilliant fingertip save to turn behind a trivela from the Argentina international. Trivela is Alvarez's party trick, struck with the outside of the boot and bending away; keepers do not usually get a hand to it at all. Fortuno did, and for a few more minutes Espanyol's point survived. There is a version of this match report, being written in the home dressing room's heads, in which Fortuno is the hero of a famous 0-0. Baena tore it up with one swing.

The cameo that decided it

Baena did not start this match. He came off the bench and compressed an entire man-of-the-match performance into what SoccerNews timed as a 28-minute cameo: two chances created, constant movement between Espanyol's lines, and then the finish itself, taken from just outside the box after Alvarez teed him up, rifled rather than placed, top-left corner, no chance even for a goalkeeper having Fortuno's day. The numbers SoccerNews cited from Stats Perform underline what kind of season Baena is quietly assembling: he has now contributed to seven La Liga goals for Atletico in 2026-27, five goals and two assists, which is already two more than he managed in the whole of the previous season, and he sits two goals short of his single-season scoring record, set with Villarreal in 2024-25. Simeone's substitutes are usually asked to protect something. Baena was asked to go and win something, and he did.

The numbers told the story before the goal did

If there is an argument that the late winner was justice rather than theft, it lives in the match data. Stats Perform's figures, reported by SoccerNews, give Atletico 1.34 expected goals from 19 shots to Espanyol's 0.53 from 10 attempts, and OneFootball's fixture data shows the visitors holding 71 percent of possession. None of that makes an 89th-minute winner feel any less cruel from the home end, and Espanyol's defensive performance — organized, deep, and brave for nearly an hour and a half — deserved its share of the credit for turning a mismatch of resources into a coin flip. But coin flips land how they land, and a side that spends 89 minutes camped in the other half usually finds one bounce, one pass, one finish. Alvarez to Baena was all three at once.

What it leaves behind

Atletico arrived in Cornella second in La Liga on 19 points from eight matches, and OneFootball's live table after the final whistle showed the win lifting them to 22 points, with Espanyol staying 12th on eight. The run is the story as much as the table: six straight wins in all competitions now for Simeone's side, a sequence that already includes the 2-0 Champions League win over Manchester United in midweek and shows no sign of politely ending. Their next test is a quick turnaround — a trip to VfB Stuttgart in the Champions League on Tuesday, October 20, per the fixture lists carried with the match reports — and a squad winning games this late, this often, travels well.

For Espanyol, the cruelty is becoming a pattern. They conceded a late equalizer at home to Malaga in their last outing before this one; now they have lost at home in the 89th minute to one of the division's form teams after defending for their lives. Manolo Gonzalez's side travel to Racing Santander next Saturday, October 24, still on eight points and still able to argue, with a straight face, that their performances deserve more. They might be right. But the table does not grade on effort, and on Saturday the difference between a point and none was one substitute, one pass, and one shot hit too purely for even the best goalkeeper on the pitch to reach.