Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jorge Cuenca will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Real Madrid the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad27 Aug 2035
Words at Real Madrid training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kang-In Lee is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Athletic Bilbao wanted more than $580.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
The target is the manager, the approach is real, and the compensation clause is the whole conversation. Clubs deny this kind of story right up until the photograph.
Day 11 of the vacancy. Candidates have been priced, sounded out and quietly ruled out — and the caretaker’s win ratio is becoming an argument all by itself.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Interim Coach after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Real Madrid, and it is not being withdrawn.
Real Madrid offered $2.7M; Athletic Bilbao said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Squad25 Jun 2035
Words at Real Madrid training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kang-In Lee is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Real Madrid asked and Real Sociedad said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Vitinha is on it.
The offer from Granada for Yeremay was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Valladolid paid $3.4M and Real Madrid took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Eduardo Camavinga is on it.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Víctor Valdepeñas, and the manager let it.
Squad18 Jun 2035
5 new faces, and Real Madrid are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Sergio Gómez will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Real Madrid the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Real Madrid did not have in the autumn.
Squad26 Feb 2035
Words at Real Madrid training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kang-In Lee is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Nobody at Real Madrid will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
A 1‑1 draw with Villarreal leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
The dugout26 Feb 2035
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Fernando León chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
4 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Real Madrid could ask drops and the wages Héctor Fort can ask rise.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Yeremay signs something — a contract at Real Madrid or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Real Madrid they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Two goals and a mark of 8.32 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad19 Feb 2035
Kang-In Lee falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings19 Feb 2035
Yeremay was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.35. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Real Madrid they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Vitinha is on it.
“I watch every Real Madrid game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Zamora runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Jorge Cuenca’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Real Madrid needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Real Madrid will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Real Madrid people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Yeremay had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
He arrived for a fee and leaves for a fraction of it. $627.5K of what Real Madrid paid for Seydouba Cissé is money the club will not see again, and the boardroom will be asked about it for two seasons.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Real Madrid have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Boardroom4 Sep 2034
Real Madrid close the window on a squad of their own making
21 in and 21 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Real Madrid have done the hard part with Barcelona, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
In brief
SquadKang-In Lee falls out with a teammate over standards
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Zaragoza waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Real Madrid is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Athletic Bilbao have kept their man, and Real Madrid go back to a list with one name crossed off it.