Real Madrid already knows what caused this nightmare season. The preseason was a disaster: barely two weeks off with no real break in between.
Real Madrid finished last season on July 9, 2025, the date of their loss in the Club World Cup semifinal against Paris Saint-Germain. The team had already arrived at that tournament with a new coach, Xabi Alonso, to face a competition that excited the club, although with some nuances.
In fact, there were people at the club who feared that the preseason for the 2025/26 campaign would be reduced to a minimum, with the cost that could entail in terms of injuries.
That is what happened. The squad had only three weeks of vacation before returning to work on Aug. 4 at Valdebebas, in preparation for which there was barely room for one friendly match. With no time for more, since the club started La Liga on the 19th of that month with a one-goal victory over Osasuna.
At Real Madrid, they believe that this preseason of barely two weeks, with hardly any time to disconnect beforehand or margin to properly prepare the team for the new campaign, is at the origin of a nightmare season from the injury point of view: a total of 55, following those of Militao, Guler, and Mbappe in recent days.
“It is impossible like this,” they say at the club, which took radical measures, such as changing the head of medical services, to try to nip the problem in the bud. A decision that has not yielded the expected results, given the balance of injuries in a season that still has five games left to play.
It should be remembered that Madrid requested at the time the postponement of that first league game against Osasuna, something with which the club from Navarre itself agreed, in addition to having the support of the Spanish Footballers' Association. But both LaLiga and the Spanish Football Federation opposed the club's request, arguing that their participation in the Club World Cup was not “force majeure.”
The disagreement generated a strong controversy, one more between the club and LaLiga. At Valdebebas, they believe that the lack of adequate preparation (at best, it would have been one more week) is at the origin of a critical season for the team from an injury standpoint, both with Xabi Alonso and Ismael Camenforte first, and later with Alvaro Arbeloa and Antonio Pintus.
As a backdrop, there is also the heavy accumulation of games by Real Madrid in the last two seasons, in which they have already reached 119 matches played, above the rest of the major European and South American clubs.
To which must be added the games of international footballers with their national teams, which means that most of the Madrid squad plays around 70 games per season. An absurd number that, this season, has taken an unbearable toll on the club.
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