It appears Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has 100 percent made his mind up. His chosen one to lead Real Madrid past the current state of dysfunction, which has now cost the team trophies in two seasons, is to go back to the legendary manager who already pulled Real out of an abyss of two straight seasons without silverware nearly 20 years ago, Jose Mourinho.
The iconic Portuguese manager known as the Special One hasn't actually won at the truly elite level of football in years, but as his success at Roma earlier this decade showed, Mourinho is far from finished, though he is as mercurial and controversial as ever.
But while Mourinho is more heavy handed than most successful Real Madrid managers of the Vicente del Bosque and Carlo Ancelotti ilk, he had a lot of success in a tough era of La Liga for Los Merengues. And a heavy hand seems to be precisely what this band of misfits needs.
Jose Mourinho is not asking for too much
According to a report from Diario AS, via Madrid Xtra, Jose Mourinho has two big demands of Real Madrid in order to officially say yes to to the proposal on the table from Florentino Perez and Co. He wants to firstly have a say in the signings Real Madrid makes, not necessarily in terms of demanding specific players but in having specific positions addressed. Secondly, he wants to have full control over the players and does not want anyone to interfere in that realm.
These are two demands that are more than reasonable and should be the bare minimum for any manager to accept this job. Because all the times these two have been violated, the manager has been royally screwed over in a situation that was inoperable to win trophies in.
Take, for example, Carlo Ancelotti. He knew he desperately needed center backs to compete but did not get any for years, and he was ultimately undone in 2024/25 by a pathetic defense. And then Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa got bashed over the head by an upper management that sided with the players or meddled with which players they were picking, including even chastising Arbeloa for picking youth academy players like Thiago Pitarch who were superior to overrated and overpaid footballers like Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga.
If Real Madrid do not grant either of these reasonable conditions to the Special One, then there would be no reason for him to take this job in the first place.
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