José Mourinho's second coming at Real Madrid has hit its first speed bump: young centre-back Raúl Asencio has been ruled out for several weeks after suffering a muscle injury in preseason training.
The club's medical department confirmed Asencio has a rectus femoris strain in his right leg, ONE reports, sustained after he started Real Madrid's preseason friendly against Leganés at Valdebebas, where he partnered new signing Dean Huijsen at the heart of defence.
ONE's report puts the layoff at around a month, while Spanish outlets including OK Diario and Goal.com have cited estimates of up to six weeks, which would keep Asencio out until roughly mid-September. Real Madrid have not publicly attached an exact return date to the diagnosis.
Either way, the timing stings. Mourinho only returned to the Santiago Bernabéu in June, 13 years after his first spell in charge between 2010 and 2013, signing a three-year contract to replace Álvaro Arbeloa. This is being described in the Spanish press as the first fitness setback of his new reign.
The injury rules Asencio out of the remainder of Real Madrid's preseason programme, which still includes friendlies against Fiorentina, Ferencváros, Deportivo La Coruña and Schalke, and puts his availability for the opening weeks of the La Liga season in doubt.
Asencio, a Canary Islands-born academy graduate, forced his way into Mourinho's defensive plans on the back of a breakout 2024-25 campaign in which he became a first-team regular for Madrid's title and Copa del Rey campaigns.
The setback also complicates his situation off the pitch. Asencio had been made available for a summer move as one of Real Madrid's transfer-listed squad members, and an injury of this length makes any deal before the window closes considerably harder to broker.
For now, Mourinho will have to manage his backline without one of the options he had been trusting in preseason, with Huijsen, Antonio Rüdiger and Éder Militão among those set to carry a heavier load at centre-back until Asencio is fit again.
