Arda Güler: The Next Özil in Mourinho's Real Madrid
At Valdebebas this summer, an old idea is being pulled off the shelf and dusted down. Jose Mourinho wants Real Madrid to run again.
Not just run. To explode in transition, the way the Bernabeu once did when Cristiano Ronaldo tore into space and Mesut Özil threaded passes through gaps that barely existed. Now the names are different – Kylian Mbappe and Arda Güler – but the blueprint looks strikingly familiar.
Mbappe as Ronaldo, Güler as Özil
According to reports in Spain, Mourinho’s plan leans heavily on a partnership that had already started to flicker into life last season. Güler and Mbappe showed an instinctive understanding in those early months together: one dropping between the lines, the other attacking the back of a retreating defence.
The roles are clear in the internal discussions. Mbappe is being cast in the part Ronaldo once played, the spearhead and reference point for every counter. Güler, just 21, is being earmarked as the man to reprise Özil’s function – the connector, the final passer, the player who sees the run a second before anyone else.
The comparison has followed Güler since the day he arrived. Spanish media began talking about “the new Özil” when Real Madrid paid €30 million to prise him from Fenerbahce in the summer of 2023. It was never only about their shared Turkish roots. It was about the way both glide into tight spaces, the weight of their passes, the calm they bring when defenders swarm around them.
Progressive passing. Vision in traffic. The knack of unpicking a deep block with one decisive ball. These are the qualities that made Özil indispensable to Mourinho a decade ago. They are the same qualities the Portuguese coach now wants to build around again.
Mourinho returns to a familiar type
That Mourinho is the man back in charge gives the whole project a different edge. He was the coach who turned Özil from a promising talent into one of Europe’s most devastating playmakers during his first spell at Real Madrid. He knows exactly what this profile of player can give him when the structure is built to serve their strengths.
Güler’s first year in Madrid has been a lesson in adaptation. He has been shuffled across the right flank, stationed in the right half-space, and even dropped deeper to help in the first phase of build-up. Those experiments at least underlined his tactical intelligence and willingness to adjust, but they never quite translated into a guaranteed starting berth in a squad packed with stars.
Mourinho wants to change that. He sees a player whose greatest weapons are combination play and creativity, not one-on-one dribbling or touchline sprints. The idea, as reported by Mundo Deportivo, is to carve out a defined central role for Güler in a transition-focused system, rather than leaving him to float between positions.
Whether that plan has already been formally laid out inside the club is not yet clear. What is obvious is that the new coach is working intensely on the squad’s structure, searching for the right balance between the established hierarchy and the young talent pushing from below.
A rare pre-season window
Timing, for once, is on Güler’s side. Turkey’s early exit from World Cup qualifying duty means he returns to Madrid without the fatigue of a long international campaign. No long flights. No stop-start training. Just weeks of uninterrupted work under Mourinho’s eye before the serious games begin.
For a coach who obsesses over detail, that kind of pre-season is gold. For a 21-year-old trying to secure his place in one of the world’s most competitive midfields, it is an opening that cannot be wasted.
On the training ground, Mourinho can rehearse the patterns he once drilled into Özil and Ronaldo: the trigger for the break, the angles of support, the exact moment Güler should release Mbappe into space. This is where theory turns into habit.
Güler, in turn, has the chance to make the “Mesut Özil 2.0” label more than a headline. The newspaper tag may be convenient, but the role is very real: the main creative hub in a side built to kill teams in transition.
He has already shown flashes that he belongs in that conversation. Now comes the stretch of weeks that will decide whether those flashes harden into status. At a club that rarely waits for anyone, can Arda Güler turn a comparison into a position of his own?
