Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid: Full Squad Returns
Jose Mourinho finally gets his Real Madrid back.
After a fragmented, makeshift pre-season dominated by absences and academy experiments, the last wave of World Cup returnees is due at Valdebebas on Monday. For the first time since he walked back through the door, Mourinho will have his full squad in front of him, stars and summer signings included.
The cavalry arrives
Marc Cucurella, Kylian Mbappe, Aurelien Tchouameni, Ibrahima Konate and Jude Bellingham are all scheduled to report as Madrid enter the fifth week of their summer work.
They will start the way all returning internationals do: medical tests, physical checks, a reset after the emotional and physical drain of a World Cup that ran deep into July for many of them.
For two of them, it is more than just a return. It is a first day in the real sense.
Cucurella, freshly crowned world champion with Spain, will step into a proper training session as a Real Madrid player for the first time. Not a presentation, not an individual workout. A full Mourinho session, with the volume turned up and the demands clear.
Konate will do the same, beginning the process of slotting into a defensive structure that Mourinho will expect to be ruthless, disciplined and unforgiving. The Frenchman has been signed to anchor that idea. Now he has to live it.
Mbappe, Bellingham and Tchouameni, meanwhile, rejoin a group that has been grinding without them. They are the spine of what this Madrid is supposed to become. Until now, they have been names on a tactics board. From Monday, they are the reality.
Rhythm to find, time to lose
There is a catch. These five arrive behind the rest.
Extended holidays after the World Cup have left them short of pre-season rhythm, and Mourinho knows the danger of asking for too much, too soon. He must drag them up to speed without breaking them. It is a fine line, and the clock is already ticking.
Madrid still have two serious tests before La Liga begins. Deportivo La Coruña await in the Teresa Herrera Trophy on 12 August, a fixture with tradition and just enough edge to matter. Four days later, Schalke 04 in Germany, another step up, another checkpoint.
Those games are not about the scoreline. They are about minutes in Mbappe’s legs, sharpness in Bellingham’s touches, Cucurella’s understanding of his new surroundings, Konate’s timing in the back line, Tchouameni’s authority in midfield. Match fitness will not arrive in a classroom.
This is where Mourinho earns his money. He has under two weeks to turn a returning group of world stars into something resembling a functional team before Espanyol arrive on 22 August.
Mourinho’s second draft
Up to now, Mourinho’s Madrid has been more sketch than final draft.
He has leaned on whoever was available, mixed senior pros with academy prospects like Alexis Ciria and tried to impose basic ideas without the luxury of his full arsenal. There have been hints of patterns, fragments of what his second spell might look like, but nothing definitive.
That excuse disappears now.
With the squad finally complete, this is the phase where Mourinho can start building his real XI, not a pre-season approximation. Combinations can be tested, hierarchies established, roles nailed down. Mbappe’s starting position, Bellingham’s freedom, Tchouameni’s responsibilities, Cucurella’s lane, Konate’s partner – these are no longer theoretical debates. They are decisions with immediate consequences.
And the context matters. For all his legend, Mourinho arrives in Madrid after several years in which his teams have not dominated the European landscape. The aura is still there, but the recent record is not untouchable.
At Real Madrid, that buys you very little. The mood at this club can flip from warm embrace to cold judgment in the space of a fortnight. Mourinho knows that better than most.
He has to hit the ground running. There is no soft landing here.
Midfield gaps and a teenager in Santander
If the squad now looks close to complete, it is not quite what the club originally imagined in midfield.
Rodri said no. Bernardo Silva is the only significant addition in that area, a luxury piece rather than the pure holding midfielder many expected. The big, headline-grabbing reinforcement at the base of midfield never arrived.
Inside the club, there is a clear stance: there will likely be no more midfield signings for the first team this summer. The market has not offered an option they consider worth the financial and sporting effort, and Mourinho has publicly backed the group he has, insisting he does not need more bodies.
That does not mean Madrid have stopped looking to the future.
According to reports in Spain, the club are tracking Racing Santander’s teenage midfielder Sergio Martinez. They view him as one to move for now, with an eye on the years ahead rather than an immediate solution.
Martinez is described as a high-quality talent: strong on the ball, tactically mature, physically capable of imposing himself in midfield. His defensive work has improved significantly, to the point where he can operate as a defensive midfielder – precisely the profile Madrid’s squad lacks in depth.
On paper, it fits. A long-term investment in a position of need, a player who could grow either in Castilla or, eventually, the first team.
Reality is trickier.
Barcelona, clauses and a hard sell
Barcelona currently lead the race for Martinez. They have moved earlier and are, for now, ahead of Madrid in convincing both player and club.
Then there is Racing Santander.
Far from being a willing seller, Racing have strengthened their hand. Martinez recently renewed his contract until 2029, and the club are pointing firmly at his release clause: €3 million, not a cent less.
They also want a substantial sell-on percentage. For a club like Madrid, that changes the equation. Paying the clause is straightforward; handing over a large slice of any future transfer fee is not. If Martinez never makes the leap to the Bernabeu first team, the operation risks becoming an expensive dead end.
Even if Madrid do pull the trigger, another question hangs in the air: where does he go?
A place in the senior squad looks unlikely given the current congestion in midfield. The logical step would be Castilla, a pathway the club have used before for young signings. But for a teenager weighing up offers, the prospect of immediate first-team proximity at Barcelona versus a developmental role in Madrid’s second team could prove decisive.
So Mourinho prepares his first-choice XI while the club quietly wrestles with the next generation.
The present demands instant results. The future is being negotiated in boardrooms and training grounds from Valdebebas to Santander. And as the last World Cup heroes walk back into Madrid’s orbit, the question lingers: can Mourinho shape all of this – stars, prospects, gaps and all – into a team that truly looks like Real Madrid again?
