{"id":71828,"date":"2026-08-17T19:33:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T19:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/71828\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T19:33:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T19:33:06","slug":"real-madrid-six-alternative-midfield-signings-after-rodri-snub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/71828\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Madrid: Six alternative midfield signings after Rodri snub"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rodri<\/a> has joined Barcelona<\/a>, which is about as bad as the news could get for Real Madrid<\/a>\u00a0and Jose Mourinho.<\/p>\n

Not only have they missed out on the perfect solution to their midfield problem, but they\u2019ve watched him join their most bitter rivals. What next?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve picked out six alternatives for Real Madrid to consider after losing out on Rodri\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n

Martin Zubimendi<\/p>\n

Xabi Alonso had reportedly identified<\/a> Zubimendi, with whom he\u2019d worked in Real Sociedad\u2019s youth set-up, as the perfect candidate for Real Madrid\u2019s midfield following the departures of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric.<\/p>\n

Getting him a year later would be spectacularly petty, but you can\u2019t rule that out when Florentino Perez<\/p>\n

Zubimendi is arguably the most obvious Rodri alternative out there. He\u2019s been Rodri\u2019s understudy for Spain, and his excellent performances off the bench in the Euro 2024 and 2026 World Cup finals suggest he can perform the same role at the highest level.<\/p>\n

The tricky bit would be prising him away from Arsenal. Zubimendi was solid without setting the world alight for much of his debut season.<\/p>\n

Still, there was a sense that the physical demands of Premier League football eventually took their toll.<\/p>\n

Being dropped for Myles Lewis-Skelly in the Champions League final perhaps hinted that a return to Spain could be on the cards sooner or later.<\/p>\n

Manu Kone<\/p>\n

Kylian Mbappe would surely vouch for the Roma midfielder, given his breakout performances for France at the World Cup.<\/p>\n

He wouldn\u2019t be a perfect Rodri analogue, but then again, how many players can replicate the skillset of a Ballon d\u2019Or winner who was named the best player in both of Spain\u2019s recent major tournament wins?<\/p>\n

Kone could instead provide the mobility and combativeness to complement a more technical passer. Put him alongside someone like Bernardo Silva and, collectively, you could recreate much of what Rodri gives you individually.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the whole point: Rodri is the best midfielder in the world because he somehow does the job of two players in one. Madrid\u2019s loss is Barcelona\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n

Enzo Fernandez<\/p>\n

We\u2019re thoroughly bored<\/a> of the Enzo Fernandez saga at this point. Just move already.<\/p>\n

The Argentinian has already fluttered his eyelashes in the direction of Madrid. He\u2019d surely love nothing more than to escape the Premier League and getting roundly booed at every ground in the country. But, so far, Los Blancos have refused to flirt back.<\/p>\n

He certainly feels like a better fit for Spanish football than English football, and an Argentine reunion with Cristian Romero at Atletico Madrid under Diego Simeone would be a match made in heaven.<\/p>\n

You could easily imagine Jose Mourinho loving him, too. Quite how anyone comes up with the \u20ac120million required to get him out of Chelsea, though, is another matter.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not exactly a like-for-like Rodri alternative, but the fact that Manchester City are eyeing him up to fill that void in their midfield is an endorsement of his credentials.<\/p>\n

Angelo Stiller<\/p>\n

It\u2019s baffling that Stiller hasn\u2019t got a big move away from Stuttgart yet, and is only making ripples in the rumour mills.<\/p>\n

If you put faith in data, the 25-year-old Germany international might just be one of the best defensive midfielders in European football right now.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t quite possess the glamour you associate with a club like Madrid, but then did Luka Modric when they signed him? Did Claude Makelele back in the day?<\/p>\n

This is a club that does best when they counterbalance their star power with a sprinkling of understated brilliance in the engine room.<\/p>\n

Aleix Garcia<\/p>\n

Like Stiller, Garcia is hardly the sort of signing that would have Madrid fans dizzy. But after they\u2019ve splashed over \u20ac100million on a shiny new attacker, perhaps a cheaper, more functional option in midfield wouldn\u2019t be such a bad idea.<\/p>\n

Garcia isn\u2019t a world-beater by any means, but he\u2019s a Spain international, proven in La Liga, and at least fits the profile of what Madrid\u2019s midfield is currently lacking.<\/p>\n

Getting top players out of Bayer Leverkusen is a simple enough process, too, as we\u2019ve seen with the fire sale of Xabi Alonso\u2019s title-winning squad.<\/p>\n

Trent Alexander-Arnold<\/p>\n

We nearly spat out our cornflakes when we came across a report from Spanish radio station Cadena SER (via GOAL<\/a>) suggesting that Mourinho is \u201cbanking on a surprise card\u201d in midfield by planning on using Alexander-Arnold there. Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re taking that with a massive pinch of salt, but it\u2019s not completely without logic. Obviously, Alexander-Arnold is not a defensive midfielder that can screen a backline.<\/p>\n

But he has played in midfield before, and possesses a technical passing range that Madrid have badly lacked since Kroos and Modric left (although Bernardo Silva will surely help on that front).<\/p>\n

Denzel Dumfries has arrived and looks much more to Mourinho\u2019s liking as a defensively sound right-back, leaving an awkward question of where that leaves the former Liverpool man. Maybe elsewhere on the teamsheet?<\/p>\n

One of Rodri\u2019s great strengths is his ability to get his foot on the ball and control a game from the midfield.<\/p>\n

Alexander-Arnold could conceivably help do that in the aggregate, if we\u2019re to go all Moneyball, but he\u2019d surely need a more physical and positionally disciplined presence alongside him.<\/p>\n

A Trent-Aurelien Tchouameni pivot isn\u2019t the worst idea in the world on paper. We\u2019ll believe it when we see it, though.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT:\u00a0Rodri and 9 more players who chose Barcelona over Real Madrid ft. Neymar, Messi, Eto\u2019o\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every player Real Madrid have signed from the Premier League?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rodri has joined Barcelona, which is about as bad as the news could get for Real Madrid\u00a0and Jose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[301,4966,82,4298,83,1102],"class_list":["post-71828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-la-liga","tag-latest","tag-madrid","tag-popular","tag-real-madrid","tag-rodri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}