Real Madrid have not waited for the noise to die down. Hours after Raul Asencio‘s drink-driving conviction became public, the club opened an extraordinary internal file on the centre-back — and the Asencio Real Madrid disciplinary process could yet cost him a chunk of his salary on top of the fine a court has already handed him.
What the club has actually done
According to journalist Melchor Ruiz, cited by Madrid Universal, Los Blancos have opened an extraordinary disciplinary file against the defender. The club will now assess the severity of the offence before deciding on a financial penalty or another sanction.
The court side of it is settled. As we reported earlier, Asencio was convicted of drink-driving and fined 14,400 euros — 120 euros a day across four months — with an eight-month driving ban attached, after failing two breath tests at a checkpoint at 6.30am on 16 August in the south of Gran Canaria. Managing Madrid also carried the sentencing.
The Asencio Real Madrid disciplinary rulebook, explained
Any club sanction would be built on the LaLiga–AFE collective agreement, the document that underpins the internal disciplinary codes of Spanish clubs. Mundo Deportivo set out the two brackets that could apply.
A serious offence covers habitual consumption of alcohol to a degree that may damage a player’s health, and any off-field conduct that seriously harms his professional performance or that "notably damages the image of the club". A very serious offence covers disobedience that gravely breaches discipline or causes serious harm to the club.
The punishments diverge sharply. Serious: suspension of salary for between two and ten days, plus a fine of up to seven per cent of the first 100,000 euros of monthly wages. Very serious: eleven to thirty days without pay and a fine reaching 25 per cent of that first 100,000 euros. In extreme cases the agreement even permits dismissal, though Madrid Universal note that outcome looks unlikely here.
Real Madrid are under no obligation to publish the resolution. They chose to last season when handling an incident involving captain Federico Valverde and Aurelien Tchouameni, which was settled inside 24 hours — so a quick, quiet answer is entirely possible.
A player already low in the pecking order
The timing is what makes this sting. Asencio has not played this season after a muscle problem picked up in pre-season, with Valdebebas targeting a return around the middle of this month.
He is also nowhere near the front of the queue. Jose Mourinho‘s preferred pairing is Dean Huijsen and Ibrahima Konate, Antonio Rudiger remains in the building, and Eder Militao is due back from hamstring surgery later in September. Madrid spent much of the summer looking for a new club for Asencio and never found one, so he stayed as arguably the fourth or fifth choice at centre-back.
There is a separate matter in the diary too: Asencio is due in court in Las Palmas across three sessions on 3, 4 and 7 September in an unrelated case in which he is one of four defendants. No verdict has been reached and nothing has been proven against anyone involved.
What happens next
Mourinho has said little publicly about any of it, and the club’s file gives him cover to say nothing until the internal process concludes. Madrid’s perfect start to the season resumes away at Real Betis after the international break, and Asencio is not expected to be involved.
For a defender who was the face of the academy 18 months ago, the direction of travel is unmistakable. A criminal conviction, a club file open on his conduct, an injury still to shake off and three centre-backs ahead of him is not a platform for a season at the Bernabeu — it is a hole to climb out of.
