Real Madrid has been avoiding a conversation that Rodri's victory in the Ballon d'Or has made impossible to postpone any longer. And that conversation is not about winter markets or buyout clauses. It’s about identity. About what kind of football the most successful club in European history wants to play.
Madrid has not wanted a Rodri. It has preferred to bet on spectacle. On the player who makes headlines, who sets trends, who sells shirts in Asia and America. Mbappé, Bellingham, Vinícius. Names that shine on their own. And that has worked, no one can deny it. But football changes faster than big clubs usually acknowledge, and the Rodri who lifted that trophy in Paris represents something that Madrid has systematically ignored. As seen in Arbeloa's new system, the club has opted for compactness and high pressing, but still hasn’t resolved the question of the holding midfielder. The idea that winning can be boring, that a backward pass in the 60th minute is worth more than a dribble in the opposing area, remains alien to the DNA of the Bernabéu.
The real problem is not signing him. The problem is that for a Rodri to make sense at Madrid, the way Madrid plays would need to be rethought. And that, for a club used to winning in a certain way, is an existential threat disguised as a tactical debate. The current midfield has talent. A lot. But as the bets on Real Madrid confirm each week when opening possession and control markets in the team's matches, the Merengues are the team where analysts find it hardest to predict the outcome when the game tightens and there’s no space for individual magic. That’s not a minor detail; in other words, it’s exactly the mark left by the absence of a proper number 5.
Tchouaméni is not bad and improves every season, but he is not the player that Madrid longs for. He has physicality, he has presence, but not to decide matches. He lacks that silent authority that turns chaos into order without anyone noticing. Valverde is extraordinary: energy, verticality, the player who shows up when it’s time to run. Arbeloa prefers Valverde as a right midfielder precisely because he sees Tchouaméni as the only available profile for the pivot. A decision that says a lot about the real options the coach has in that position. And Bellingham, who is no longer quite sure if he is a central midfielder or an attacking midfielder, is too important to ask him to focus on recycling possession.
None of them do what Rodri does; there is no one on the white bench who can even emulate what the Spaniard does at City, and that, sooner or later, takes its toll. Not always in the form of a resounding defeat. Sometimes in the form of a league lost on points in the final stretch. Or a European tie slipping away in a match that Madrid was dominating and suddenly stopped dominating because no one knew how to slow the pace when it needed to be done.
Álvaro Arbeloa arrived at the first team directly from Castilla after Xabi Alonso's departure, with a demanding schedule and no room for adaptation. As noted in the monitoring of the club's sporting situation, Madrid has opted to keep its structure intact and trust what it has. That confidence is legitimate. But it does not solve the midfield problem.
Because a coach arriving in January with the schedule already upon him needs clear references in the midfield. As tactical analyses have documented on Arbeloa's system, the coach's 4-4-2 gains compactness and solidity, but still depends on Tchouaméni being available to maintain balance in the pivot. When he is not, as happened against Bayern in the return leg of the quarter-finals, the team loses that guiding thread that no one else can provide.
The debate about what kind of midfield Madrid needs is legitimate and necessary. But it should start with a more honest question: what kind of Madrid does Madrid want to be? If the answer is the Madrid of spectacle, of impossible comebacks and goals in the 90th minute, then a Rodri is not needed. They have enough with what they have. But if the answer is the Madrid that wants to keep winning when the spectacle does not appear, then someone is needed to control what no one currently controls. And that someone, in today’s football, is called Rodri. Or is very much like him.
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