A historic turnaround: Mourinho shakes off his Real Madrid nightmare | Goal.com

Published on 10 Oct 2026 | Reading time: 7 minutes

Jose Mourinho wants his Real Madrid players fit and available, and for once the numbers are on his side. The squad have reached mid-October without a single fresh injury, something that has not happened in a decade, leaving aside the players still nursing long-term problems from last season.

According to the Spanish newspaper "As", keeping his squad healthy ranks among Mourinho's main priorities this season. He hammered the point home in his press conference before Friday's clash with Villarreal, steering the talk away from the fuss over Kylian Mbappe riding a bicycle and onto the physical condition of his players.

The Portuguese said: "Do you want a story? I touch wood, because football is still football, but do you want a story? I'll tell you one: this is the first time in the past ten years that Real Madrid reach mid-October without a single injured player."

He left three players out of that claim, all still carrying injuries from last season: Ferland Mendy, Eder Militao and Rodrygo. Raul Asencio makes a fourth, after finally going under the knife to treat a fracture in his shin bone that had troubled him for months.

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10 Oct 2026

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Mourinho had tackled the subject before the international break too, speaking ahead of the Elche match about the work the club is doing to cut injuries.

Mourinho said: "We work here within a comprehensive, natural and professional plan, built on very good cooperation between everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean the players, who are the most important, and the technical staff, which includes people qualified in the fields of sports science, prevention, muscle strengthening and individual training, as well as monitoring the small indicators that may appear before problems occur, and also the medical staff, who are strongly involved in this comprehensive system, through a lot of unseen work."

Set those four aside and Mourinho has 22 fit players at his disposal as competitions resume. Clean comparisons with past seasons are tricky this year, because the fixture calendar has shifted on the back of the new, drawn-out international break.

The benchmark, then, is the final La Liga round before October's international break, by which point the opening two Champions League rounds had already been played.

Look back over the past ten years and the picture is grim. In some seasons Real Madrid lost players to a total of 60 matches through all manner of injuries.

Rodrygo, Ferland Mendy and Eder Militao have yet to play a minute this season, still sidelined by injuries picked up last term. The Brazilian defender is expected back after the November international break, when Real Madrid host three straight games at the Santiago Bernabeu against Celta Vigo, PSV Eindhoven and Alaves.

Tiago and Endrick missed the opening fixtures too, both held back by minor niggles from pre-season. Aurelien Tchouameni, meanwhile, did not feature until the fifth match, the team's Champions League opener, held up by physical problems lingering since the World Cup.

Surgery was unavoidable for Raul Asencio, who treated a stress fracture in his right leg that had dragged on for months. Not one player, then, has missed a match through an injury sustained since the current season began.

Mourinho's absentees for the resumption boil down to four: academy player Raul Asencio, Rodrygo, Ferland Mendy and Eder Militao, every one of them carrying an injury over from last season.

Ferland Mendy, Endrick and Jude Bellingham all began the season on the sidelines. The French defender had torn the proximal tendon of the rectus femoris in his right thigh, an injury that kept him out for six months.

The Brazilian forward spent four months out with a hamstring injury. Bellingham, for his part, chose to have shoulder surgery after the Club World Cup, finally shaking off pain he had carried since dislocating the joint around two years earlier.

It all followed much the same pattern as the previous campaign. Eduardo Camavinga picked up a sprain that cost him a month, while Antonio Rudiger, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dani Carvajal suffered various muscular injuries. Setting aside the three who started injured, the absences added up to 18 matches across the first ten games.

In the last match before October's break, away to Villarreal, Xabi Alonso had no Carvajal, Trent Alexander-Arnold or Rudiger, all out with injuries from that same season, and Mendy was still missing with his problem from the year before.

Dean Huijsen and Dani Ceballos joined the list once the break ended, each ruled out of two matches by minor muscular problems.

Eduardo Camavinga went down in the final training session before competitions started, spraining the medial collateral ligament of his left knee the day before the European Super Cup.

The injuries kept coming. Jude Bellingham, Jesus Vallejo, Dani Ceballos, Aurelien Tchouameni, Brahim Diaz, Dani Carvajal, Kylian Mbappe and Thibaut Courtois all passed through the medical clinic.

Those players missed 32 matches between them across the first ten official fixtures. Mendy, Militao and Rodrygo had physical problems too, though none of them sat out a game.

Carlo Ancelotti reached the final match before the break, against Villarreal, without Courtois, David Alaba and Brahim Diaz. That night Carvajal suffered a serious injury to his right knee in a messy challenge with Yeremy Pino.

Dani Ceballos went down on the fourth day of pre-season at Valdebebas, while Arda Guler and Ferland Mendy had to cut short the team's tour of the United States.

Both were out for around two months, and the first week of competition brought a brutal run of injuries. Two days before La Liga kicked off, Thibaut Courtois tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Then Eder Militao did exactly the same thing moments into the second half of the opening match at San Mames.

Ancelotti had lost two cornerstones of his defence until the spring. Vinicius Junior then missed four matches with an injury to his right biceps femoris, while Carvajal sat out two with pain in his right leg.

Arda Guler, too, suffered a fresh setback in his injury, which later flared up a second time, and David Alaba picked up a problem in the adductor muscles of his right thigh. The injuries cost the squad 52 matches across the first 11 fixtures. Ancelotti played the final game before the break without Courtois, Militao, Alaba and Arda Guler, and while Alaba returned after the international break, Ceballos joined the absentees.

A minor ankle sprain disrupted Dani Carvajal's pre-season for six days. Alvaro Odriozola missed the Super Cup with calf pain, and Rodrygo sat out the first two La Liga rounds with a strain in his right thigh.

Add in the minor niggles suffered by Carvajal, Militao, Jesus Vallejo, Nacho Fernandez, Toni Kroos, Lucas Vazquez and Karim Benzema, and the total reached 21 matches across the first nine official fixtures.

That season also featured a long international break at a time much like the present, ahead of the World Cup in Qatar. Thibaut Courtois, Luka Modric and Lucas Vazquez were all injured for the first match back, Real Madrid against Osasuna.

This one brought a flood of injuries. The coronavirus pandemic also disrupted the pre-season of Karim Benzema, David Alaba and Alvaro Odriozola, though it did not cost any of them a match.

Before the season even started, Toni Kroos suffered a problem in the pubic area that kept him out for two months, while Dani Ceballos tore a ligament and spent more than four months on the sidelines.

By the final match before October's break, Ancelotti could not call on Marcelo, Ferland Mendy, Ceballos, Isco, Marco Asensio, Gareth Bale or Mariano Diaz.

Andriy Lunin, David Alaba, Luka Modric and Luka Jovic were missing at various points across roughly the first month and a half. All told, the injuries cost 60 matches over ten fixtures.

Played in the thick of the pandemic, this season opened with an international break, so Real Madrid managed only four matches before the next one. Even over that short stretch, the injuries to Dani Carvajal, Eder Militao, Marcelo, Odriozola, Toni Kroos, Isco, Eden Hazard, Marco Asensio and Lucas Vazquez added up to 16 matches.

Mariano Diaz was also unavailable after undergoing tonsil surgery. Zinedine Zidane had to juggle six absences in the match before the break and four in the one after it. In 2019-2020, Marco Asensio suffered the worst blow of pre-season, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament and the external meniscus in a friendly against Arsenal.

Come the final match before the break, Zidane could not rely on Thibaut Courtois, Nacho Fernandez, Ferland Mendy, Marcelo and Asensio himself.

Fede Valverde, Luka Modric, Isco, James Rodriguez, Eden Hazard, Rodrygo, Brahim Diaz and Mariano Diaz all passed through the medical clinic across the first ten official matches too.

By the end, the injuries had cost 45 matches over ten fixtures.

Marcelo, Dani Carvajal and Isco all missed the defeat at Alaves, with Julen Lopetegui's Real Madrid in freefall.

The Basque coach was also without Jesus Vallejo for several games early on. Even so, it ranked among the kindest starts of recent years, the absences totalling just 12 matches across the first 11 fixtures.

Keylor Navas, Dani Carvajal, Theo Hernandez, Marcelo, Mateo Kovacic, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema all missed the win over Espanyol in the match before the second international break.

Unlike this season, Zinedine Zidane's side was hit hard early that year, with the absences reaching 32 matches across the first ten fixtures.

Marco Asensio, Toni Kroos and Raphael Varane picked up injuries in those opening weeks too. In 2016-2017, Marcelo, Casemiro and Luka Modric all missed the 1-1 draw against Eibar at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Before that, Keylor Navas, Pepe, Marcelo, Isco, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema had each sat out one or more matches, pushing the total to 23 across the first ten official fixtures.

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