Real Madrid Secures Teresa Herrera Cup Amid Midfield Concerns

Real Madrid lift a trophy, but doubts refuse to go away. The Teresa Herrera Cup goes in the cabinet. The unease stays on the pitch.

At Riazor, José Mourinho named a full-strength side in his second spell in charge and still watched his team grind, not glide, past Deportivo La Coruña. The win wrapped a bow on pre-season. It did not hide the flaw that has followed Madrid all summer.

On SER Deportivos, journalists Antonio Romero and Tomás Roncero stripped away the feel-good varnish.

Romero began with a caveat: pre-season is a minefield for conclusions. He estimated this Madrid are operating at just 20 to 30% of what they can be. Then he cut to the point. The structure is clear: a superb defensive block, an almost untouchable attack… and a midfield missing a conductor.

“Real Madrid still feel they are missing a playmaker in midfield,” he insisted. The balance is wrong. The machine runs, but without a clear brain between the lines.

Roncero pushed the argument into the boardroom. For him, the failed pursuit of Rodri Hernández is not a footnote, it is a warning.

“If you wanted to sign Rodri and you did not, that means you have to fill that void,” he said. Leave that gap open, and the team will spend the entire season feeling it. The club, he argued, can no longer pretend this is a secondary issue. The market shut without a Rodri-type anchor. The problem did not.

So where does the solution come from?

Romero put a name to an idea he called “the Mourinho method”. If any coach can bypass a traditional midfield and still build a winning side, he argued, it is Mourinho. The Portuguese has done it before: structure, sacrifice, direct routes to goal. He knows how to win without the classic No. 10.

But even that has limits. Romero pointed to the gold standard in the club’s recent history: a midfield of Casemiro, Kroos and Modrić. The most successful Real Madrid side ever was built on that triangle. You can improvise, he suggested, but you cannot ignore that template.

One candidate, in his eyes, stands out for the sacrificial role that would glue this version of Madrid together: Bernardo Silva.

“Based on what I saw in La Coruña and what I have seen from him at City and his experience, I think Bernardo Silva would accept this sacrifice,” Romero said. A luxury playmaker willing to do the dirty work. A creative mind ready to dig in next to Tchouaméni, closing spaces and opening passing lanes in the same move.

“He can be a soldier for Mourinho,” Romero added, drawing a quiet comparison with Modrić. Not in status, not yet, but in profile: intelligence, mobility, the willingness to serve the system. He explicitly ruled out other internal options for that specific job: Camavinga, Arda Güler, Bellingham and Valverde do not quite fit the mould he has in mind.

While the debate rages around the core of the team, the new faces on the fringes bring their own stories and expectations.

Romero called for patience with Yan Diomande. The midfielder is still a teenager, not yet twenty, and now walks into the most demanding dressing room in club football. Real Madrid, he reminded listeners, is a different planet compared to shining for five minutes with Leganés. The shirt is heavier. The margin for error is thinner. The timeline for judgement should be longer.

Out wide, though, excitement already has a name.

“Diomande attracts a lot of attention, but the player everyone is eager to see running down the wing at the Bernabéu is Cucurella,” Romero said. The full-back, with his aggression and verticality, has instantly tapped into something the stadium has been missing.

He is, in Romero’s words, “the type of footballer you have to love.” Since Marcelo and Roberto Carlos, the Bernabéu has been waiting for that electric jolt on the left flank, that sense that every overlap might end with the stadium on its feet. With Cucurella, they believe it might return.

A friendly trophy is already in the bag. The season’s real prize will demand more than that: a settled midfield, a solved Rodri-shaped problem, and an answer to the question that hung over Riazor all night.

Who will actually make this Madrid team play?