José Mourinho is not just rebuilding Real Madrid's spine on the pitch. According to ONE, his most urgent project since returning to the Bernabéu has been sealing the club off from itself — choking the leaks that turned last season into a public soap opera.
The trigger, ONE reports, was the fallout from an ugly training-ground clash between Aurélien Tchouaméni and Federico Valverde that became public knowledge rather than staying inside Valdebebas. Club president Florentino Pérez was said to regard the leak itself as almost as damaging as the incident, reportedly remarking that "the leak is worse because it shows something beyond the argument itself."
The consequences were real and severe: Real Madrid fined both Valverde and Tchouaméni €500,000 each, a punishment widely reported at the time by Sport1/Maariv and Israel Hayom as a club record. Independent Spanish reporting described a heated training-session flare-up that left Valverde needing treatment, with both players later appearing before an internal investigator to apologise to teammates, staff and fans.
That episode, alongside Vinicius Jr's public sniping at previous coach Xabi Alonso and Kylian Mbappé airing frustration over his playing time, left Madrid's dressing room looking porous and fractious just as Mourinho walked back through the door for his second spell in charge.
His response, ONE reports, is to minimise player exposure to the media and tighten control over anything that flows out of the building. Real Madrid have already scaled back the usual pomp around new arrivals — axing traditional fan unveilings and open media access in favour of content produced solely by the club's in-house channel, a shift also flagged by Managing Madrid ahead of the new season.
It is a pattern Mourinho has run before. During his first Bernabéu tenure between 2010 and 2013, he clashed repeatedly with goalkeeper Iker Casillas, at one point branding him "the mole" over suspected leaks — a jibe Casillas later threw back at him defiantly: "Who leaked it? José Mourinho. The mole? Of course."
He took the same approach to Chelsea and Manchester United, where former captain John Terry has spoken about the value Mourinho placed on presenting a united front to outsiders regardless of what was happening internally.
ONE frames the current crackdown as part psychology, part damage control — an attempt to restore what Mourinho calls a "family" feel inside a squad that spent much of last season airing its grievances in public. Whether Real Madrid's notoriously leak-prone dressing room stays quiet under the new regime is likely to be one of the season's more revealing subplots, on and off the pitch.
The club has not commented publicly on the specifics of any internal media protocol, and ONE's report should be read as reflecting the mood and measures described by sources close to the club rather than an official statement.
