Real Madrid Impress as Mourinho Highlights Team Growth
Real Madrid’s pre-season rhythm is starting to sound familiar: early control, clinical finishing, and José Mourinho walking away talking about the team, not the stars.
On this occasion, Mbappé set the tone. Six minutes in, he pounced on a dreadful back pass from Schallenberg, surged through, and beat Loris Karius with the kind of cold precision Madrid bought him for. One mistake, one goal. Madrid in front and already in charge.
The second arrived before the game could settle. In the 20th minute, Arda Güler whipped in a superb corner and Huijsen attacked it, thundering his header home to double the lead. It was simple, ruthless, and exactly the sort of set-piece efficiency Mourinho obsesses over.
From there, Madrid managed the contest with a calm that suggested this was more about conditioning and cohesion than scorelines. The third goal, when it came, underlined the depth being built.
Just before the hour, Mourinho rolled the dice with his new faces. Cucurella and Diomande both came on to make their debuts, part of a wider wave of changes. The fresh legs didn’t break the rhythm; they sharpened it.
In the 57th minute, substitute Espí finished off a flowing move, converting a precise cross from Carreras to seal a 3-0 victory. It was the kind of goal that makes a coach feel the work on the training ground is landing.
Mourinho’s big picture: from good players to a “very, very good team”
Afterwards, Mourinho’s message was clear: this is about the collective.
“At this moment, it’s difficult to talk individually because we are growing as a team,” he told Realmadrid TV. “Here, we only have good players, very good players, and very, very, very good players. From the combination of the work of these players, we have to create a very, very good team. That’s what we’re trying to do, and I think we’re taking the right steps to achieve it.”
The “steps” are not gentle. Madrid’s new arrivals have been dropped straight into an unforgiving schedule.
“I’m also very happy with those who arrived last,” Mourinho said. “It’s not easy to jump straight into high-intensity training like what we are doing. It’s not easy for them to have double sessions in the morning and afternoon, because they train in the morning with the group and in the afternoon with the small group that joined now. With incredible heat. The 5 p.m. training session is really tough, and they arrived with a top mentality.”
That mentality is being matched by meticulous planning. Every minute on the pitch is calculated.
Mourinho handed 45 minutes to Mbappé and Konaté, a solid half of football to build rhythm without risking overload. Jude Bellingham, Cucurella, and Diomande were kept to 30 minutes, a tighter window designed to ease them in while still testing their sharpness.
“Then, the question of 45 minutes for Mbappé and Konaté or the 30 minutes for Bellingham, Cucurella, and Diomande are things that we analyze scientifically with the data we have,” he explained. “And with the most important factor, which is the player’s own experience, the knowledge the player has of their own body.”
For Mourinho, this week feels like a threshold. The heavy legs, the brutal double sessions, the 5 p.m. grind in fierce heat – all of it is meant to carry Madrid into what he calls “this good week, which is the next one,” in the right state.
“I think we’ve reached this good week, which is the next one, in a very acceptable condition for this moment in the season,” he said. “Let’s go for it.”
The goals, the debuts, the data-driven minutes: all of it points in one direction. Madrid are not just chasing results in August. They are building something they expect to last deep into the season.
