Real Madrid need a midfielder who can dictate the tempo and carry the ball cleanly from back to front. Everyone knows it.<\/p>\n
That type of player has been missing at the Bernabeu ever since Toni Kroos retired in 2024, with Croatian legend Luka Modric following him out the door a year later.<\/p>\n
One big name emerged as a candidate at the end of the 2025-2026 season: Rodri Hernandez, the Spain international who anchors the Manchester City midfield.<\/p>\n
Florentino Perez, though, hesitated over the deal for a few key reasons:<\/p>\n
* Firstly: the player’s numerous injuries in the recent period.<\/p>\n
* Secondly: the impact of these injuries on the player’s level.<\/p>\n
* Thirdly: the player’s advancing age, “30 years”.<\/p>\n
Other names duly entered the frame as Real looked to reinforce the midfield of Jose Mourinho’s first team.<\/p>\n
The story didn’t end there, though. A major twist arrived after the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
Rodri rediscovered his very best form, technically and physically, across the tournament on American soil, scooping the Best Player award. That performance forced Perez to think again about signing him.<\/p>\n
Cadena SER then dropped a bombshell, reporting that the Merengues dressing room is pushing hard to bring Rodri in.<\/p>\n
Now Perez must make his call: sign Rodri, chase a different name, or roll the dice and leave the position vacant once more.<\/p>\n
Leaving that gap unfilled would be a huge gamble. It would mean leaning on Aurelien Tchouameni and Federico Valverde together, and the pair are on famously bad terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real Madrid need a midfielder who can dictate the tempo and carry the ball cleanly from back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,22706,393375,257971,596,10812,41288,86798,2354,22455,182111,85,69802],"class_list":["post-817765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bayern-munich","tag-e-camavinga","tag-f-mastantuono","tag-football","tag-j-mourinho","tag-laliga","tag-m-olise","tag-manchester-city","tag-real-madrid","tag-rodri","tag-sports","tag-vinicius-junior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}