Real Madrid will not take part in the 2025-26 season of the Champions League anymore. Bayern Munich defeated them 6-4 in two legs – 2-1 in the first leg in the Bernabeu, 4-3 in the second in a second leg that ended controversially, with two red cards and a good deal of recrimination on the Madrid end. What the tie disclosed, however, was by no means a bad night. It consisted of the accumulation of a midfield problem of trademark during a season, which had been noticeable in the first week of August.
A Midsummer Forgetfulness.
Madrid had a huge vacancy in the engine room as they embarked on the 2025-26 season. Luka Modric has left since the end of the 2024-25 season, joining AC Milan, eliminating the final part of the Kroos-Modric axis that had supported the two wins of the Champions League of 2022-24. Of this, the club spent a good deal of money–almost all on defense. Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dean Huijsen, and Álvaro Carreras all attended. Wide attacker Franco Mastantuono was added. There was no central midfielder.
The rationale behind this, as was explained by the new head coach, Xabi Alonso himself, was that the existing team was sufficiently good. Alonso, who had been quoted as saying that they had enough with whom to rule in midfield, had said with them that they would rule in the midfield as they went into the first season of La Liga on August 19. It was the worst possible stress test that was being administered to that statement in a matter of days.
Whistle-Injury.
Jude Bellingham had been lost before a ball was kicked at a competitive affair. On July 16, following the Club World Cup, the England midfielder underwent surgery on his left shoulder despite being close to having the surgery twice, trying to avoid missing matches. It was not till October that he was expected back. Then Eduardo Camavinga injured himself in training, and Real Madrid was left without two of the three central midfielders they had planned to start with at the same time. The past season had already limited Camavinga to just 19 LaLiga games due to two years of five various injuries.
Aurélien Tchouaméni had to play the role of a de facto midfield anchor. Federico Valverde, who plays primarily as a box-to-box player, was asked to play more as a defensive player. In place of Alonso, Arda Güler, a deep-lying central midfielder who is a natural attacking midfielder, was deployed in a deeper central role – a role that Alonso had also tested in the semi-final of the Club World Cup. Dani Ceballos covered but had fewer than ten appearances of meaningful minutes throughout the whole season.
Bellingham and Camavinga were both late substitutes in the 2-0 victory over Espanyol on September 20. However, due to the injury of the first few weeks of the season, and Tchouameneni getting a semitendinosus muscle injury in November following the loss to Liverpool at Anfield in the Champions League, Madrid never really established any sort of consistent midfield three during the first half of the season.
The Departure of Alonso and the Implications Thereof in the Midfield.
Everything was aggravated by the instability of the managers. On the day after a 3-2 defeat in the Spanish Supercopa final against Barcelona in Jeddah on January 12, 2026, a day later, Alonso was fired after 233 days in office. The coach was sacked, not on a mutual basis as the club alleged, and sources close to the coach informed ESPN that the former Real Madrid defender, Arbeloa, who had been in charge of the reserve Castilla, was immediately promoted.
Arbeloa settled down in the dressing room; however, as he himself admitted, and the club management noted, he had not developed his playing style thoroughly. The Madrid midfield malfunctioned at the worst time possible as Tchouameneni was suspended because of the second leg against Bayern (the yellow card in the first leg resulted in a suspension), and also as Camavinga was sent off in the 86th minute of the second leg. Luis Diaz scored three minutes later. After being closed in stoppage time, it was by Michael Olise.
What the Exit Says.
It is not that it proved to be an unfavorable pairing or choice that destroyed the Champions League campaign of Real Madrid in 2025-26, but rather a structural deficiency that could have been picked up before the commencement of the season. The exit of Modric had never been brought up in the transfer market. Five times in a year, before the season had even started, Camavinga was injured, and it was reported as a risk that was not mitigated. Tchouaméni, the most reliable player at Madrid, was playing fatigued and, later on, injured.
At the time of the second leg of the quarterfinal, when Tchouaméni was suspended, and Camavinga was expelled, Arbeloa was now without any senior in the centre field. It is not the choice to implement a transfer or the following tactical error that will be used to compose the history of the midfield in Real Madrid in 2025-26. The rebuild that will have to take place this summer was that which failed to occur in the summer of last year. This season proved that case too much so.
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