Real Madrid have spent this summer being congratulated for the half of the window that is easy. Six players in, a new manager settled, a pre-season won. The hard half — the Operación Salida, the business of persuading players to leave a club nobody wants to leave — is still sitting on José Mourinho’s desk with a fortnight to run. And according to Bernabéu Digital, the Portuguese has now set his order of preference: he would sanction both departures under discussion, but if only one of them happens, an Asencio sale comes before Eduardo Camavinga’s.
Here is what this piece works through:
- What Bernabéu Digital actually report about Mourinho’s preference between Raúl Asencio and Camavinga
- The message Camavinga is said to have delivered to his manager — and why it changed the order
- The two arrivals these exits would reportedly unblock: a midfielder and a centre-back
- Why the centre-back pecking order has moved against Asencio in pre-season
- The obvious contradiction — selling a defender while the defence is short
- What realistically happens before the window shuts on 31 August
Background: a full squad and an empty exit door
Real Madrid’s incoming business was declared finished a week ago. Marc Cucurella, Ibrahima Konaté, Bernardo Silva, Denzel Dumfries, Carlos Espí and Yan Diomande all arrived, Endrick came back from his loan at Lyon, and the club briefed that the squad was complete. What has not happened is the other side of the ledger. Nobody of consequence has left.
That matters more than it sounds. A squad list has a ceiling, and Madrid are pressed against it. Every report doing the rounds this week about a late addition — and there have been several — carries the same asterisk: somebody has to go first. Which turns a question of preference into a question of sequencing, and puts two names at the front of the queue.
The core of it: Mourinho’s order of preference
What the report says
Bernabéu Digital’s Miguel Rubio Contreras reports that Mourinho has given the green light to both a possible Asencio departure and a possible Camavinga departure — but that, forced to choose, he would rather it were the Spanish defender who left. Neither player has been declared surplus, and no formal offer for either is reported. This is a manager’s ranking, not a transfer.
It is still a meaningful one. Raúl Asencio is homegrown, and he became a first-team fixture during the defensive injury crisis that ran through Madrid’s 2025-26 season. A year ago, the idea of the club listening to offers for him would have looked like negligence. Pre-season has moved the furniture.
Camavinga said he wants to fight for it
The variable that changed, per the same report, is Camavinga himself. The France midfielder is said to have told Mourinho directly that he intends to stay at Real Madrid and win a place back, in full knowledge of how crowded the middle of this squad has become. Bernabéu Digital say the attitude landed well with a coach who rates that kind of response — and that Camavinga’s exit has consequently lost priority, without him becoming untransferable.
Anyone who watched last season will understand why the club would take that seriously. Camavinga’s two years have been broken up by injury and by a rotation that never quite settled, and his name has been attached to a departure for most of the summer — we covered the reporting in early August that both he and Asencio wanted to stay. What is new is that the manager has now been given a reason to rank one above the other.
The two doors an exit would open
Bernabéu Digital frame both departures the same way: each would unblock an arrival, one a midfielder, the other a centre-back. That is consistent with what has been briefed all week. Josep Pedrerol said on Vamos A Ver that one more signing could still arrive: “Mourinho has been considering it and it could happen. It would be a midfielder.” Madrid Universal, relaying the same information, note that any addition depends heavily on departures.
The midfield name attached to all of this is Martín Zubimendi, though sources close to Mourinho have already denied that he asked for the Arsenal man — a contradiction we unpicked when the story resurfaced and was knocked down inside a day. Take the specific name out of it and the structure still holds: Madrid want space, and space is created by selling, not by wishing.
Why the pecking order has moved against Asencio
The football reason is the interesting one. In a separate piece on Monday night, Bernabéu Digital report that Antonio Rüdiger’s pre-season has left doubts where Mourinho had expected certainty. The German began the summer as a fixed point in central defence; the sensations of the last few weeks have been mixed enough for the manager to look elsewhere.
The beneficiaries are the players behind him. Dean Huijsen, who took the number four shirt this month, has taken his chances and pushed himself into serious contention for the opening day. Konaté impressed on his outing against Schalke. Behind them, academy centre-back Mario Rivas has had the sort of pre-season that gets a teenager noticed — he was one of two canteranos catching the eye in the summer friendlies. Suddenly Mourinho has more centre-back options than he expected, and the one with the most resale value ahead of him is the easiest to convert into cash.
The challenges: why an Asencio sale carries risk
The obvious objection is that Real Madrid’s defence is not exactly overstocked with fit bodies. Éder Militão has returned to training after two anterior cruciate ligament injuries, but Managing Madrid’s reporting on the club’s injured contracts puts his realistic return at late September or early October, with Ferland Mendy not expected back until around the end of the year. Selling a young centre-back in that context requires the replacement to be more than a hypothetical.
The second problem is that the plan only works in one direction. If Asencio leaves and the centre-back does not arrive, Madrid have made themselves worse in the one area that was already stretched thinnest last week. And if Camavinga goes instead, the club loses a midfielder in a window where their pursuit of a midfielder has been denied by the manager’s own circle. Neither exit is risk-free; both are being contemplated with a fortnight left to fix the consequences.
Third, and least glamorous: no fee, no bidder and no timetable have been reported for either player. Everything above is preference and possibility. Madridistas have watched enough transfer windows to know how many of these end with the player still in the building on 1 September.
Future outlook: what to watch before 31 August
The sequence to watch is simple enough. A serious offer for Asencio arrives; Madrid decide whether the money and the buy-back protection are right; the squad place opens; the centre-back or midfielder Mourinho has been promised becomes affordable in list terms as well as financial ones. If step one never happens, none of the rest does either.
Asencio is not the only young man whose future is unresolved. Bernabéu Digital also report that the club remain open to proposals for Thiago Pitarch, with the midfielder facing limited minutes and the club said to be exploring a Gonzalo García-style formula that would protect a route back to the Bernabéu. That is the same logic applied to a different age bracket: move the player, keep the option.
The calendar does not help. Mourinho’s first LaLiga match of his second spell is away at Espanyol on Saturday, which means the sporting department will be conducting its exit business while the manager is trying to start a season. The final week of August at the Bernabéu is rarely quiet, and this one has more unresolved threads than most.
The verdict from a Madridista point of view
There is a version of this that reads badly — a homegrown defender sold to fund a signing the manager may not even have requested. There is also a version that makes complete sense: a young defender who would be fourth or fifth choice this season goes somewhere he plays every week, at a price that lets Madrid solve a genuine gap, with the club keeping a hand on his future. Which version we get depends entirely on what arrives in the other direction.
What the reporting does confirm is that Camavinga has helped himself. Telling a manager like Mourinho that you intend to fight for your place, in a squad where fighting for your place is the whole job description, is rarely a wasted conversation. For more on the standards being set at Valdebebas, read our piece on the double sessions that have reshaped the Madrid week — and stay with ReadRealMadrid for every exit and arrival before the window shuts on 31 August.
