Real Madrid do not lose many transfer battles to Racing Santander. This week they appear to have lost one, and the timing could hardly be worse.
According to the journalist Rodra, writing for Defensa Central and relayed by Madrid Universal, Sergio Martinez will not be joining Los Blancos this summer.
The Racing midfielder was, by every account of the last fortnight, within touching distance of the Santiago Bernabeu. The announcement was treated as a formality. It is now off.
Rodra says he has spoken directly to the player’s representative and to those closest to him, and that the position is unambiguous: no move to Madrid in this window. That leaves Real Madrid Castilla, a week or so from the close of business, still hunting for the midfielder the whole plan was built around.
How close Sergio Martinez came to Real Madrid
Close enough that this one stings. The pursuit has been running for most of August, and it escalated quickly. We reported earlier this month on the modest release clause Real Madrid had been watching at Racing, and then on the structure of the deal itself — a low-cost signing for the subsidiary side with a clearly signposted route towards Jose Mourinho’s first-team group.
It was, on paper, exactly the kind of business Madrid have made their trademark: identify a young Spanish talent before the market catches up, pay a fraction of what he will be worth in eighteen months, and give him a competitive senior environment at Castilla while the club watches him develop.
The market did catch up, mind. Premier League and Bundesliga clubs entered the conversation in the middle of the month, as we covered at the time, and Madrid’s response was to accelerate rather than retreat. By the middle of last week, Racing’s sporting director Chema Aragon had publicly acknowledged the Madrid approach — while making no secret of the fact that his club would rather keep the player.
Aragon also said something at the time that reads differently now. He indicated the player himself had reservations. That was easy to file away as a sporting director talking his own book. It turns out it was the story.
The Castilla problem the player would not accept
The reservation, per Defensa Central, was specific and it was structural. Martinez did not want to be registered with Castilla in the Primera Federacion.
That is not a snub aimed at Real Madrid. It is a cold reading of a career. Racing are a Segunda Division club with a genuine promotion project; Castilla, for all the badge on the shirt, play in Spain’s third tier. For a midfielder already trusted at senior level in a professional league, moving to Madrid meant moving down a division and betting everything on a promotion into the first team that, as the report puts it, might never arrive. Plenty of talented footballers have made that bet at Valdebebas and are still waiting.
There was an attempt to bridge the gap. The initial idea, according to the same report, was that Martinez would sign for Castilla and immediately return to Racing on loan — the classic compromise that lets a club bank the asset while the player keeps developing in a higher division. Real Madrid blocked it. The whole point of the signing, from the club’s side, was to fill a hole in the Castilla midfield right now, and a player on loan in Santander fills nothing.
That refusal is defensible. It also appears to be the thing that killed the deal.
Sergio Canales and the pull of staying put
One further name is worth flagging, because it explains the human side of a decision that otherwise looks purely tactical. Defensa Central report that Sergio Canales — back at his boyhood club and the most senior voice in that Racing dressing room — actively encouraged Martinez to stay and grow where he is.
Canales knows the terrain better than most. He left Racing for Real Madrid as a teenager in 2010 amid enormous expectation, and his career took a very different shape from the one that was forecast for him. A word from him carries a weight that no sporting director’s press conference ever could.
Why the timing hurts Castilla
The reason Madrid wanted a midfielder in the first place has not gone away. Thiago Pitarch is the player Castilla have effectively been building around in recent seasons, and the club’s intention this summer was to pull him further into first-team dynamics rather than leave him anchored to the reserves. Real Madrid have already made their position on him unmistakable, refusing to negotiate when Fulham came calling this week. He is also currently sidelined with a knee problem with no confirmed return date, which sharpens the point rather than softening it.
So Castilla need a midfielder who can start every week. They identified one. He has said no.
What makes the miss more conspicuous is that the rest of the reserve-team rebuild has gone smoothly. Madrid have added the Ghanaian defender Oscar Naasei from Granada, a deal we covered as it came together, and on Friday Granada confirmed a second departure to the capital: the Moroccan forward Rayan Zinebi, renewed until June 2029 by his parent club and then loaned to Castilla for 2026/27. Granada’s official statement, published by their academy channels and reported by Mundo Deportivo, confirms the loan and an option to extend the renewal by two further seasons depending on sporting objectives.
A defender in. A forward in. The midfielder, the one position where the need was most obvious, still outstanding.
Is there a way back?
The report leaves a door slightly ajar, noting there could still be a late change of heart. Windows do strange things to people in their closing hours, and Real Madrid have historically been very good at being patient right up until the moment they are not.
But nothing in the reporting suggests Madrid are preparing to move on the one thing that would change Martinez’s mind — the loan-back to Racing. And if that stays off the table, the player’s logic does not shift either. He is not turning down Real Madrid. He is turning down the Primera Federacion, which is a very different sentence and a much more rational one.
For Mourinho, none of this touches the first team; his midfield options are settled and captain Federico Valverde has anchored a start that has taken Los Blancos to the top of LaLiga after wins over Espanyol and Real Sociedad. The consequences here are longer-term, and they land on the pipeline rather than the XI.
Still, this is the kind of deal Real Madrid are supposed to win comfortably — a €3 million-bracket signing, a teenager’s dream club, a straightforward yes. That it has fallen apart over a registration category says something about how much harder the recruitment of young Spanish talent has become, even for the club with fifteen European Cups in the cabinet.
Racing Santander, for now, keep their midfielder. Castilla keep looking.
Transfer claims in this piece are reported by Defensa Central and have not been confirmed by Real Madrid or Racing Santander.
