Mikel Oyarzabal Scores Twice as Real Sociedad Beat Málaga 5-2 in a Seven-Goal Game at La Rosaleda

MÁLAGA, Spain · SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

La Rosaleda got seven goals, two comebacks that never quite were, and a lesson in how fast a good side can take a game back. Real Sociedad beat Málaga 5-2 on Sunday in La Liga's Matchday 9 — a third straight league win, as Eurosport's match report recorded — and they did it the hard way. Twice in the second half Málaga cut the lead to a single goal, and twice the visitors answered, the second time within a minute, before Gonçalo Guedes turned a rout into the final scoreline. Mikel Oyarzabal, honoured by the home club before kick-off as a recent world champion in a gesture reported by Diario Vasco, scored twice. Takefusa Kubo and Orri Óskarsson had done the early damage, and Málaga's goals — from Adrián Niño and a Pablo Martínez volley that would headline most games — ended up as decoration on a defeat that keeps the hosts bottom of the table.

Three minutes in, the plan was gone

Málaga, bottom and still chasing a first win of the season, needed the kind of start that settles a nervous ground. They got the opposite inside three minutes. Héctor Fort worked the ball to Kubo, and the Japan international cut a left-footed shot from the edge of the area into the top corner, beyond Alfonso Herrero — Vermouth Deportivo's account called it a genuine golazo, struck from the edge of the box and placed where the goalkeeper could not reach it. The goal carried a personal weight, too: OneFootball reported that it ended Kubo's 10-month drought, his first goal in 22 competitive matches since he last scored on 20 December.

To their credit, Málaga did not fold. Radio Marca Málaga's account of the afternoon described an effervescent home side in the opening stages, pressing high and playing in the visitors' half, and on 20 minutes they nearly levelled: Niño met his moment at the near post and Álex Remiro produced what the same report called an authentic wonder save to keep it out. Five minutes later the home side's fragility showed instead. A loose ball in midfield broke kindly, Óskarsson outran Fernando Calero and finished the one-on-one with Herrero, and a game Málaga had spent twenty minutes believing in was 2-0 against them. Sportradar's fixture record confirms the shape of the half: two goals in the first period, none for the hosts, and a mountain left to climb.

Every time Málaga believed, Oyarzabal answered

Juan Funes changed two at the break, sending on Adam Aznou and Ramón Enríquez, and nine minutes into the second half Málaga had their goal. Martínez drove a low ball across the face of goal and Niño smashed it past Remiro — Sportradar's record credits Martínez with the assist — and suddenly La Rosaleda had a game at 2-1 down with more than half an hour to play. The hope lasted five minutes. Kubo turned provider, laying the ball back for Oyarzabal, whose low finish restored the two-goal margin and quietened the ground in the way only a quick answer can.

What happened next was the game's wildest minute. On 66 minutes Martínez met a volley that flew into the top corner — Cadena SER's report called it another golazo, and the queue snapshot records it as a volley too — and at 3-2 the comeback was genuinely alive. Sixty seconds later it was not. Sociedad went straight back down the other end and Oyarzabal, set up by Jon Martín in Sportradar's account, produced what Cadena SER described as a finish identical to his first: low, hard, and past Herrero. On 73 minutes the scoring closed in fittingly chaotic fashion: Óskarsson's effort came back off the crossbar and Guedes, on from the bench, finished the rebound as Herrero came out to meet it. Chupete drew one late save from Remiro, as Sportradar's play-by-play recorded, but the contest had long since been settled.

What it leaves behind

For Real Sociedad and Pellegrino Matarazzo, the numbers behind the noise are just as good. SportsCafe's full-time match record gives the visitors 21 shots and an expected-goals figure of 2.43 to Málaga's 1.10: this was not a smash-and-grab dressed up as a rout, it was the better side winning the chances as well as the goals. Five goals from four different scorers, away from home, takes La Real to 16 points and fifth place in the table picture kept by both Cadena SER and ceroacero — into the European places, with a captain in Oyarzabal who was applauded onto the pitch by the home support and then spent the evening reminding them why.

Málaga's side of the ledger is harder to read without wincing. Ceroacero's report noted that their 17 shots were a season high for the club, and they scored twice at home against a side in form — and still lost by three, because their two goals bought them a combined six minutes of hope before Oyarzabal took each one back. They stay bottom on four points, still without a win after nine matches. The road does not soften: ceroacero's fixture account sends Málaga to Alavés next, while Sociedad host Levante, a fixture OneFootball's listings confirm. A team that can score twice and shoot 17 times is not dead. But a team that answers its own goals by conceding inside five minutes, twice in one half, is running out of ways to call this bad luck.