Jose Mourinho will love wading into Real Madrid’s feuding squad of superstars

Sam WallaceSun, May 10, 2026 at 6:30 AM UTC

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Jose Mourinho would jump at the chance to return to the Bernabeu - Patrícia de Melo Moreira/Getty Images

José Mourinho has taken command of a few listing vessels during his management career, although the 2026 Real Madrid is a very different proposition. Just as the club’s successes tend to be epic, so their crises play out on the same scale.

Of course, Mourinho likes a challenge – addicted as he is to the job. If it is to be Real, then his job is very different second time around. As for the recent training-ground fighting – that sort of thing is relatively simple to sort out. Someone leaves, someone stays. The conflagration over two days involving Federico Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni is not going to define Real, however entertaining the squabbling might be ahead of Sunday night’s Clásico. The bigger problems for Mourinho – for whoever manages Real – is how the club’s place in the modern order of things is changing.

Clubs like Real have to deal with challenging personalities and knife-edge negotiations all the time. Vinícius Jnr is one year out from the expiration of his contract and has the club in a corner. He also may not like Mourinho very much. Kylian Mbappé’s polling with Real fans is the only voting this week that may convince Sir Keir Starmer that life could be worse. Antonio Rüdiger might have an unfortunate tendency to bully smaller members of staff. All these are problems for Real – but essentially difficult star footballers are their core business. They acquire them, they sell them, and then they go out and sign more.

The drama is part of the show. Trophies are won along the way and the lure of the new keeps everyone interested. The cost of doing so is always steep, but that too is part of the brand. The issue for Real, for Mourinho, for any manager who seeks to rebuild according to the traditions that the club expects, is that it no longer has the liquidity to buy other clubs’ best players. This is not a new phenomenon – change has been notable for years but its effect takes time to be felt.

Aurelien Tchouameni (left) fought with team-mate Federico Valverde this week - Denis Doyle/Getty Images

Real are presented as a financial juggernaut – annual revenues of €1bn (£870m), a commercial income of €594m (£514m). But their costs are also enormous. In the club’s half-year results published in December, Real had €3m (£2.6m) in cash and had drawn down around €100m (£87m) from short-term and long-term credit facilities to meet their half-year wage bill. Real’s squad are paid six-monthly – two vast biannual salary remittances that clear out the club’s cash reserves and now also some of their credit lines.

Real’s total debt stands at around €2bn (£1.74m), not quite as vast as Barcelona, but enough to make lenders think twice about extending further borrowing.

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That debt and Real’s status as a member-owned club has long convinced president Florentino Pérez that a big move is required to inject capital and keep Real at the top. The attempts have been spectacular. The 2021 European Super League was a plan to tear up the game to keep Real on top. After that failed, Pérez has tried to edge the club towards a plc conversion, with no notable success on what would be formidably complex from a legal and tax point of view. Announcements abound but nothing material has changed.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez is understood to be considering going back to Mourinho - Elisa Estrada/Getty Images

The stadium? The rebuild has increased revenues but those gains have been offset by greater operating costs and the cost of serving the debt associated with it. The half-year results suggested that, so far, the gains have been small. There have been embarrassing defeats to a formidably well-organised local residents’ group who have had concerts cancelled over noise levels and stopped an underground car park construction.

There would have been a time when Real would have responded to two seasons without a major trophy, and the indignity of falling behind a financially chaotic Barcelona, with a buying spree. They might have looked around Europe and considered that the bright young Spanish coach in charge of a Champions League finalist and leading the Premier League title race was their man. After Mikel Arteta, they might have looked at his squad and wondered whether Bukayo Saka or Declan Rice would look good in white.

But those options that require the full deployment of financial power are no longer levers that Pérez can pull. Arteta might be a more attractive prospect in the summer of next year, were he to drift out of contract and be available as a free agent. Real find themselves in a different market: famous free agents, leading emergent European and South American talent. The club are good at that too, but like every other club that pursues that strategy, there is a consequence. One becomes a club that wins sometimes rather than a club that wins most of the time.

No one is sure what plan there is for the Pérez succession. The 79-year-old has ruled for 23 of the last 26 years. He cannot go on indefinitely. The rivalry between the two princelings wrestling for the throne, financier Anas Laghari and chief executive José Ángel Sánchez, occasionally spills into the public sphere. In February, the club announced that no directors would be leaving the club when rumours swirled that Sánchez was to be dismissed.

None of this will stop Mourinho, if appointed, wading into the midst of a feuding squad of superstars. That is what he loves to do. It is also likely that his exit, when it comes, will be just as dramatic. It often is where Real are concerned and that tension is part of what makes it interesting. But replacing the manager is the easy bit. They come and they go. Replacing a president born in a different era, replacing a way of existing. Finding the money to do it all. That is the hard part.

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