Endrick’s Real Madrid future is back in an Italian shop window little more than a week after the summer market shut. AC Milan have made the Brazilian a priority for the January transfer window and are ready to try again for a forward Los Blancos flatly refused to sell in August, according to a report from Calciomercato carried by Bernabéu Digital and relayed by Madrid Universal. The Rossoneri failed once. They think the second attempt has better odds.
Endrick AC Milan interest is back on the table for January
The bones of the story are simple enough. Milan wanted Endrick in the summer, made an approach, and were told no. Real Madrid did not entertain a sale, and José Mourinho was reportedly central to that decision — the Portuguese wanted the 20-year-old kept in his squad after a loan spell at Olympique Lyon rather than shipped straight back out.
What has changed is not Madrid’s valuation of the player but the calendar. January reopens the question, and Milan intend to arrive with a different proposal: a loan with an option to buy, the structure clubs reach for when a permanent fee is out of reach but the player might be gettable anyway. Calciomercato’s framing is that Endrick remains one of Milan’s leading targets despite the summer rejection, which is a polite way of saying they never really moved on.
They are not alone. As Madrid Universal reported last week, AS Roma are also weighing up a revival of their own interest in the striker for January. Two Serie A clubs circling the same 20-year-old is the sort of thing that tends to become a saga rather than a story, and Madridistas have seen this film before: Endrick’s name spent most of the summer attached to English and Italian clubs, from Arsenal’s renewed interest to a string of speculative loan proposals, and every one of them ran into the same wall.
Why Real Madrid said no in the summer
That wall was the manager. Mourinho’s position through the window was that a squad built to defend a title does not hand away a 20-year-old Brazilian international centre-forward simply because the minutes are hard to come by. Madrid blocked the exit rather than negotiate it, and the reasoning had as much to do with squad depth as with sentiment.
Look at the shape of the attack and the logic holds. Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior are the two guaranteed starters. Rodrygo is out long term with a knee problem that is not expected to clear until early 2027. Behind them sit Endrick, Yan Diomande and Carlos Espí — the No. 9, a summer arrival still finding his feet in Spain, and an academy forward with a handful of senior minutes. Sell any one of the three and Mourinho is a single hamstring away from a genuine forward shortage across a schedule that runs on three fronts until May.
There is a second argument, less flattering to Madrid. This is a team that is not scoring enough. Los Blancos have won their opening games while converting chances at a rate that stands out for the wrong reasons, a problem Thibaut Courtois himself flagged after the Inter win when he pointed to the Betis game and said the same thing had happened twice. A side that struggles to turn possession into goals is not obviously a side that should be handing a striker to Milan, even temporarily.
The minutes problem Milan are counting on
Milan’s plan is patient rather than aggressive, and that is what makes it credible. Rather than bidding now, they intend to watch how much football Endrick actually gets between now and December. If he plays, they lose him. If he does not, the option-to-buy loan becomes an easy conversation for everyone in the room — including the player.
The early evidence is mixed at best. Endrick has only recently come through a muscle problem, which cost him the sharpest weeks of the start of the season, and the pecking order has not waited for him. Against Inter Milan at the Bernabéu, it was Espí who was readied in the 93rd minute to replace Mbappé — a substitution that, per Marca, produced visible friction on the Real Madrid bench between Mourinho and assistant Nuno Santos as they managed the closing changes. Symbolic or not, watching an academy forward get the stoppage-time call is not the trajectory a 20-year-old No. 9 wants.
The competition is also getting better, not worse. Bernardo Silva and Arda Güler have given Mourinho more ways to build attacks through midfield, which tends to concentrate the forward minutes rather than spread them. And when Madrid have needed a change of shape late in games, the instinct so far has been to add legs and width rather than a second striker.
What a loan would actually cost Real Madrid
A loan with an option to buy is the cheapest way for a buying club to acquire leverage, and the most expensive way for a selling club to lose control. If Madrid were to agree one in January, they would be doing three things at once: solving Endrick’s minutes, thinning their own attack for the second half of a title defence, and handing Milan the right to make the move permanent on terms agreed while the player’s value was at its lowest point.
That is precisely why the club resisted in the summer, and nothing about the first month of the season has changed the underlying maths. Endrick is a Brazil international who wears the No. 9 at the Santiago Bernabéu. Madrid have historically been reluctant to let that kind of asset leave on someone else’s terms, and the Lyon loan was pitched as development rather than a step towards the door.
The counter-argument is the one Milan will make: a striker who does not play does not develop, and a season spent as a fifth forward is a season lost. Roma will make the same case. If Endrick reaches the winter break with a handful of substitute appearances and no run of starts, the pressure to move will come from the player’s camp as much as from Italy.
Endrick’s Real Madrid decision runs to December
For now, nothing is agreed and nothing needs to be. Milan have not made a formal approach for January, and Madrid have not signalled any softening. This is a monitoring exercise dressed up as a transfer story — but it is a monitoring exercise with a clear trigger, and everyone involved knows what it is.
There is one more variable, and it is the one Milan can least control. Mundo Deportivo’s numbers on the club’s lack of goals make the case for a striker who attacks the six-yard box rather than drifting into it, which is exactly the profile Endrick offers and exactly the profile Mourinho has not yet turned to. If the finishing does not improve, the argument for giving the No. 9 a run stops being about his development and starts being about results.
Endrick’s next three months are therefore the whole story. Rayo Vallecano, the Champions League league phase and the run to El Clásico on 25 October offer plenty of fixtures in which a forward could force his way in, especially with Madrid’s finishing under scrutiny and Rodrygo unavailable. Mourinho fought to keep him; the fair test of that is whether he now uses him.
If he does, Milan’s January plan quietly dies and Madrid look vindicated for holding firm twice. If he does not, the club will spend the winter having exactly the conversation it spent the summer refusing to have — only this time with less to argue with. As ever with rumours out of Italy, treat the timeline as reported rather than settled: Calciomercato’s report describes intent, not a deal.
