Dean Huijsen’s Real Madrid career has taken a clear turn for the better, and the centre-back used his media duties after Tuesday’s 2-1 Champions League win over Inter Milan to explain why: Jose Mourinho never lets him off the hook.
Dean Huijsen on his Real Madrid manager: “He gets on my case a lot”
Asked about Mourinho’s influence, the Malaga-born defender was unusually candid about the treatment he gets from the Portuguese.
“I think he is very much on top of me. He gets on my case a lot and that is good, because he knows the qualities I have,” Huijsen said, in quotes carried by Mundo Deportivo. “He helps me a lot and I am happy. He gives me a hard time so that I improve and take that step forward.”
He returned to the theme with Marca: “Everyone wants their centre-back to win duels. He is right on top of me and that is good for everyone.”
“We have to compete a little better”
The most interesting part of Huijsen’s assessment was not about himself at all. Los Blancos won on Tuesday but needed seven Thibaut Courtois saves to do it, and the defender’s diagnosis was about temperament rather than tactics.
“We have to compete a little better,” he told reporters, per Managing Madrid. “You see the opponents, they get fouled and they roll around three times, they complain, and in the end you are the one who gets the yellow card. We have to improve on that. Ultimately football is about emotions, for the referee too.”
It is a strikingly Mourinho-shaped complaint, and Huijsen confirmed it has come from above: greater competitiveness is one of the messages the coach has been drilling into the dressing room.
The chances that got away
On the game itself, he refused to accept his team had been outplayed. “I do not think there was a problem with the game. We created a lot of chances and in the end, by not scoring them, the match got a little crazy. We have to have more control.”
“If we had taken them we could have won 5-0 or 6-1. That is the demand of being at Real Madrid, the best club in the world, the biggest.” A third goal, he insisted, would have settled it long before the nerves arrived — the same gap between chances created and goals scored that ran through our full reaction to the Inter win.
On the Bernabeu whistles and Vinicius
Huijsen was also asked about the boos aimed at the team in general and Vinicius Junior in particular. He offered no criticism of the crowd, only a defence of his team-mate.
“Vini knows what Madrid is, the demands here,” he said. “We all know how good he is. He is going to work harder, he always does, and he is always smiling.” On the substitution that caused a stir, Huijsen suggested it was simply a function of the new rule, something that can slip everyone’s mind in the moment.
From a difficult first year to feeling at home
The wider story is a player in a far better place than he was twelve months ago. He was direct about how hard his debut campaign had been: “The scale of Madrid is enormous, people always talk about us for good or bad. I think we are more united as a group. Last year was difficult.”
Asked what had changed, he laughed off any suggestion of a mental-training regime. “I do not meditate or anything like that. When you first arrive you do not really know the magnitude of the club. Now I am more used to it, I feel more at home. My career has been pretty hectic. Now I am good, I just have to keep working.”
A recall to the Spain squad is the obvious next milestone. “That is not in my hands, playing a lot and playing well at Madrid is. Five games is nothing in football, a season is 50 or 60.”
Game six of that argument comes on Saturday, when Rayo Vallecano visit the Bernabeu and Mourinho’s centre-back pairing faces a very different kind of examination.
