Real Madrid refocuses on La Liga after stunning loss to Benfica

MADRID (AP) — A day after a stunning loss to Benfica in the Champions League, Real Madrid returns its focus to La Liga knowing that it needs to improve.

Coaches and players were on the same page after the 4-2 defeat in Lisbon left the club in the first knockout stage of the Champions League, taking responsibility for a poor performance and a lack of attitude.

“The games start on minute zero and not on minute 45, so in the end the defeat is deserved," said Kylian Mbappé, who scored both Madrid goals on Wednesday to take his Champions League-leading tally to 13. "I can’t say it’s not deserved because we didn’t play well to win this game. They did. Benfica at home is always difficult. It was our fault.”

Mbappé said it seemed the team didn't take the game as seriously as it should have. Goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin scored Benfica's fourth goal in the last minute, securing the Portuguese side the goal difference it needed to make it to the top 24. Madrid needed only a draw but defeat cost it a top-eight automatic position in the round of 16.

“Benfica were playing for their lives and we didn’t look like we were playing for ours," Mbappé said. "That was the big problem of the game. At the start, both teams had things to play for, we were in the top eight and they were in the top 24. We saw how Benfica played but we didn’t see what was at stake.”

Madrid coach Álvaro Arbeloa said he wasn't able to convey to his players the importance of the game to Benfica.

“I told the players but I didn’t know how to transmit to them what I wanted them to do on the field,” Arbeloa said. “When things don’t work out, when the team is far from the level we gave, the responsibility is always and absolutely mine.”

Real Madrid hosts city rival Rayo Vallecano on Sunday. Madrid has won five in a row in La Liga to cut its deficit to leader Barcelona to only one point. Rayo has lost three consecutive games across all tournaments and sits 16th in the standings, near the relegation zone.

Barcelona, which rallied to beat Copenhagen 4-1 on Wednesday and secure a top eight spot in the Champions League, visits mid-table Elche on Saturday.

Third-placed Atletico Madrid is at second-to-last Levante on the same day, and fourth-placed Villarreal visits ninth-placed Osasuna.

The Basque Country derby on Sunday has Real Sociedad — which has won three in a row in the league — visiting Athletic Bilbao.

Barcelona remained without injured midfielders Pedri and Gavi for its match in Elche, while Madrid could see the return of Antonio Rüdiger and Trent Alexander-Arnold against Rayo. Villarreal will be without defender Juan Foyth after he ruptured his left Achilles tendon in the previous round.

The Spanish league will begin offering 50 euros ($59) for each verified tip on places that are broadcasting games without proper permission.

Bars, restaurants, betting places and similar establishments need to subscribe to a specific package to be able to show the games. The league said such broadcasts have a letter on the corner of the screen to identify them, allowing fans to tell whether they are legal or not.

If people see that an establishment is showing an unauthorized broadcast, they can email La Liga with images to help it verify the infraction.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe attempts a shoot at goal during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe, right, battles for the ball with Benfica's Enzo Barrenechea during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Real Madrid's head coach Alvaro Arbeloa gives instructions during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Real Madrid's head coach Alvaro Arbeloa sits at the bench before a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe celebrates after scoring the opening goal during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.

As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.

“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."

To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.

“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”

Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.

“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”

For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.

Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.

During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.

Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.

“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”

A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.

Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.

A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.

“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.

Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.

Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”

Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.

Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.

“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.

When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.

In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.

Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."

In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.

State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.

Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.

“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”

He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.

Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."

The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.

“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”

Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)