{"id":73662,"date":"2026-08-21T09:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T09:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/73662\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T09:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T09:53:13","slug":"real-madrid-coach-mourinho-makes-rodri-barcelona-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/73662\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Madrid Coach Mourinho Makes Rodri Barcelona Confession"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Real<\/p>\n

Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho made a confession about new FC Barcelona signing Rodri and confirmed two injuries in his first press conference ahead of Espanyol.<\/p>\n

Europa Press via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho<\/a> made a confession<\/a> about new FC Barcelona signing Rodri and confirmed two injuries in his first press conference ahead of Espanyol.<\/p>\n

The Catalans beat Madrid<\/a> to the Spain captain and Best Player at the World Cup, after talks between his former club Manchester City and Los Blancos broke down.<\/p>\n

Despite their shortcomings in that area of the park, however, since the departures of Toni Kroos<\/a> and Luka Modric, Mourinho stated: \u201cI don\u2019t think we have a deficit in midfield.\u201d <\/p>\n

“Then you can come with the question of: ‘If he doesn\u2019t have a deficit, why did you want to sign Rodri?\u2019. Rodri would have been like the icing on the cake. He is a great player, with great experience and great status. If you can have him, then we will have him and we will improve,” Mourinho added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have Tchouameni, Camavinga, Valverde, Bernardo, Arda; because I think that Arda in the end can also play in these positions. It\u2019s not that we have a problem or that we have to go for another player,\u201d the Portuguese also offered.<\/p>\n

With Madrid finishing trophyless over the past two seasons while Barcelona mopped up five out of the six domestic trophies on offer, the battle for dominance in Spain can be won and lost in midfield.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see if Mourinho has something to counteract World Cup winners Pedri and Rodri, where Carlo Ancelotti<\/a>, Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa couldn\u2019t come up with answers.<\/p>\n

Mourinho confirmed two injury absences for Real Madrid<\/p>\n

With Espanyol on Saturday at the RCDE Stadium, his second La Liga debut as Real Madrid manager following a stint in the early 2010s, Mourinho confirmed that two players could miss the clash through injury while one of them definitely will.<\/p>\n

\u201cEndrick<\/a> won\u2019t be called up for the match, he has a minor muscle injury.<\/p>\n

Tchouameni could be called up but will not be a starter, he needs training sessions to reach match rhythm due to the injury he had,” Mourinho stated.<\/p>\n

Though Endrick\u2019s absence doesn\u2019t change much in the grand scheme of things as Kylian Mbappe will probably be the striker, Tchouameni\u2019s condition forces Mourinho to possibly choose Eduardo Camavinga as his Real Madrid pivot on Saturday night. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho made a confession about new FC Barcelona signing Rodri and confirmed two injuries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[93,223,2119,4297,2011,82,272,664,83,1102,1973],"class_list":["post-73662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-espanyol","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-fede-valverde","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-luka-modric","tag-madrid","tag-manchester-city","tag-pedri","tag-real-madrid","tag-rodri","tag-toni-kroos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73662","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=73662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}