Barcelona spent Tuesday parading Rodri in front of their supporters. Twenty-four hours later, José Mourinho sat in a television studio and explained, with very little diplomacy, why the midfielder is not a Real Madrid player. The fee mattered. It was not what killed the deal. What finished it, by the manager’s own account, was the feeling that Rodri was not certain — and that a footballer who has to think twice about the Bernabéu is not a footballer Los Blancos should be chasing.
“I spoke to him a couple of times and Real Madrid made him a very good offer,” Mourinho said in an interview with El Chiringuito, reported by the Guardian. “Without negotiating with City, the club were in contact with Rodri and made him an important offer. Rodrigo had doubts, he doubted. And his doubts created doubts in me.”
“He is an extraordinary player and he behaved in the right way with us. I have nothing bad to say. But Real Madrid are so big that you can’t have players who have to think twice. You get in touch with a player and the player says: ‘When do I go?’ That’s how it works.”
Why the Rodri deal died at Real Madrid
The Spanish version of the same interview is, if anything, blunter. Bernabéu Digital report Mourinho saying that “if a player is not clear about coming to a club like Real Madrid, it is better not to go for him” — and that once the doubts registered inside the building, the signing stopped being treated as an absolute priority. The distance between Madrid and Manchester City over the fee was real, the outlet notes, but it was not the only factor. The player’s own hesitation weighed just as heavily. It is a version that fits what the club were briefing weeks ago, when Madrid were never fully convinced by the pursuit.
What Rodri chose instead
Rodri was presented at Barcelona on Tuesday after a €75m (£65.4m) move from Manchester City, and said the switch had “always my first choice”. According to the Guardian, Spain’s World Cup-winning captain had three offers on the table after the tournament — Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Barcelona — and ruled out PSG because he wanted to come back to Spain. At 30, he joins eight of his international teammates at the Camp Nou.
Put to Mourinho that this looked like a victory for the rivals, the answer was the shortest of the night. “Victories are on the pitch, trophies,” he said.
The midfield hole Mourinho says he can live with
The awkward part for Madridistas is what has not happened since. Real have not signed an alternative in central midfield, which the Guardian describes as a clear hole in a squad that ended 2025-26 with nothing for the first time since 2020-21. Mourinho, though, has been consistent all summer that he is content with what he has, and Bernabéu Digital’s market desk read Wednesday’s words as a manager treating the window as effectively shut barring a surprise from Florentino Pérez. There are still 12 days of it left, and the club are not out of the midfield market entirely before it closes on 31 August.
None of it will be settled by an interview. Mourinho’s argument — that conviction matters more than a CV — only holds if the midfield he already has carries a title race, and the first evidence arrives on Saturday night at Espanyol.
