With LaLiga safety under their belts after a midweek success over Las Palmas, Sevilla might have quietly fancied their chances of a first home H2H success since September 2018.
Yet, despite being guaranteed nothing more or less than the silver medal, Real started with intent and shaded the opening quarter-hour.
However, there was plenty of controversy in lieu of decent shots, with Loïc Badé receiving his marching orders having apparently felled Mbappé in a direct foot race towards the Sevilla goal, despite the fall looking somewhat theatrical.
Jude Bellingham and Federico Valverde then both saw efforts blocked, before Madrid’s increasingly-menacing Mbappé bore down the left flank after receiving an inch-perfect downfield ball from Luka Modrić – however, he could only side-foot across goal under pressure from Nemanja Gudelj.
Meanwhile, Sevilla’s best chance of the first half came right at the end of it, when Jacobo Ramón lost the ball to Álvaro Pascual. He was one-on-one with Andriy Lunin, but the Ukrainian stopper closed him down at the near post, forcing the hosts’ #42 to hit the side netting.
That gave Sevilla a lift, but if their task was already difficult, it became something else entirely within two minutes of the restart.
Of all people, HT substitute Isaac Romero was initially yellow-carded for an ugly, studs-up challenge on Aurélien Tchouaméni, but when a VAR review showed him to have missed the ball entirely, the referee upgraded his call to a red card, turning Romero’s heat map into more of a ‘heat line’. Soon after, Mbappé saw a menacing shot from the D fly mere inches over the Sevilla bar.
The hosts failed to heed that warning though, and LaLiga’s top gun finally struck just five minutes later, as he latched onto a searing Modrić pass that Adrià Pedrosa tried to intercept on the slide, and fired a low, powerful shot into the far-left corner of Ørjan Nyland’s net.
Understandably, Sevilla weren’t much of a threat going forward, with their two dismissals ultimately giving this clash a sense of inevitability the longer it went on.
Real had enough time to add a second as well, with a cross from the left being headed across goal by Gonzalo García and straight into the path of Bellingham, who could not miss an open goal from inches out.
Real’s attention now turns to Carlo Ancelotti’s final game in charge of Los Blancos, as he prepares for a new managerial life with the Brazil national side. As for Sevilla, they remain firmly focused on a summer rebuild, after extending their 100% losing record as LaLiga home outsiders this season to five games.
Flashscore Man of the Match: Luka Modrić (Real Madrid)