Once again, Real Madrid dropped points in La Liga, drawing the always tough Real Betis 1-1 on the road on Friday night, and, in truth, this was yet another game in which Real were outclassed by a team with a smaller budge than their own. No matter the players Florentino Perez brings in - and these have often been the wrong players these last two summer windows - Real have failed to build on their 2023/24 Champions League and La Liga success.
If anything, Real Madrid are heading in reverse. They have already fired two managers since 2025, and after this latest disappointing result against Real Betis, Alvaro Arbeloa's fate is sealed with Florentino all too eager to can his former right back and current interim manager. Perez is always one for the big splash, and the wheels are now in motion for his biggest splash yet.
Having already run it back pretty successful with Zinedine Zidane and his predecessor Carlo Ancelotti, Real Madrid are strongly linked with a move for the man who helped build the team Don Carlo took to La Decima a couple of years later, the mercurial Jose Mourinho.
The wheels are in motion for Jose Mourinho
There is no reunion, save for the ones that never happened with Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos, that would grab more headlines than Mou, the current manager of Benfica, making his way back to the Santiago Bernabeu. And despite all the drama after Mou's regrettable commentary following Gianluca Prestianni's abuse of Vinicius Jr. in the Champions League, it appears there is no love lost between the Madrid board room and the eccentric legendary manager.
For better or for worse, Florentino Perez is attracted to headlines, though there is some truth to his apparent belief that Real Madrid are at their best when they are managed by a big profile who is as blockbuster as the club is. Xabi Alonso was a big name as a player and even went undefeated as a manager for Bayer Leverkusen, but, well, he's no Carlo Ancelotti or Jose Mourinho in the world of coaching.
Mourinho has a lot to prove still. Even though his resume speaks for itself, including at Real Madrid when he won titles off THAT legendary Barcelona team after Real risked turning into a joke in the late 2000s, he hasn't been successful at the elite level in a decade. Mourinho was great for Roma, but he wasn't competing in the Champions League with them. And the less said about Tottenham Hotspur, the better.
But Real Madrid are in a bad moment, and in these moments when they need a strong presence to lay down the law on the burgeoning egos in the dressing room with perhaps a much bigger ego in the manager's chair, who better to look to than a reunion with Mou? If it fails spectacularly, then, so be it, because even the measured Alonso had failed spectacularly with this suddenly brattish bunch.
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