José Mourinho Begins Second Era at Real Madrid in Valdebebas

The second José Mourinho era at Real Madrid did not begin with fireworks or grand speeches. It started with medicals.

On Monday morning, 13 July 2026, at Valdebebas, the Portuguese coach officially took charge again, the day beginning at the Clínica Sanitas for routine examinations before his first training session at 17:00. No packed stands, no unveiling on the Bernabéu pitch. Just doctors, data, and a trimmed-down group of players.

It suited him. This is Mourinho’s preferred territory: behind closed doors, building from the inside out.

A Skeleton Squad and a World Cup Shadow

The first session was deliberately stripped back. The World Cup has carved holes through every elite squad in Europe, and Madrid are no exception.

Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappé, Vinícius Jr, Thibaut Courtois and the rest of the international contingent are still away, their returns staggered over the coming weeks. In their absence, the first faces to work directly under Mourinho are a different kind of headline: Eduardo Camavinga, Franco Mastantuono, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Dean Huijsen among them.

This is not the full orchestra. It is the warm-up, the tuning of instruments.

To make the numbers work on the training pitch, Mourinho will lean heavily on Castilla. Youth players will step into drills usually reserved for global stars, a reminder of how distorted this pre-season is by the World Cup calendar and how incomplete any early judgement will be.

For now, the manager is working with fragments. The full picture of his squad will take weeks to come into focus.

A Club Restless, A Bench Recycled

Mourinho returns to a club that has not quite lost its identity, but has certainly lost its rhythm.

As Mundo Deportivo underline, Xabi Alonso’s project lasted around a year. Álvaro Arbeloa, promoted from youth duties, barely made it to the six-month mark before the club moved on again. Two icons of the club, two short-lived experiments.

The message from the board this time is uncomplicated: stability, and trophies. The squad is rich in individual quality, yet the conversion into regular silverware has been sporadic. Too many near-misses, too many “projects” and not enough parades.

Mourinho has not been waiting for the first whistle to start. Since his appointment was confirmed after Florentino Pérez secured re-election as club president, he has been shaping the project from a distance. Monday is simply the moment when plans stop living on paper and start running on grass.

Reports in Spain, including from Football España, have already pointed to early recruitment moves and adjustments to his coaching staff. The direction of travel is clear even if the final destination is not: this will be a Mourinho team, in structure and in personality.

Doors Ajar, Answers Pending

One thing is missing from the usual Real Madrid script: the grand presentation. According to Mundo Deportivo, no date has yet been set for Mourinho’s formal press unveiling. For now, he works in the shadows of Valdebebas, not the spotlight of the Bernabéu.

Transfer business sits in the same holding pattern. The market is open, the doors at the club both ways are, as the report notes, ajar. The core of the squad is broadly settled, but nobody is pretending this group is frozen in place.

The real decisions, the real judgments, will not come from a first training session with half a team. They will arrive when Bellingham is back in midfield, when Mbappé and Vinícius Jr are sharing a front line, when Courtois returns to anchor the defence. They will arrive when the World Cup dust settles and the competitive fixtures start to pile up.

For now, Mourinho has a whistle, a training pitch, and a handful of players eager to impress. It is a quiet beginning for a coach who rarely stays quiet for long.

How long this new era lasts, and what it delivers, will be decided far from the sterile calm of a Monday morning at Valdebebas.