The Endrick Real Madrid project was supposed to move forward this season. Instead, five games into 2026/27, the Brazilian has not played a single competitive minute — and by the time he is finally fit enough to be trusted with the ball, the queue in front of him has grown by one more name.
Fit again, but only for ten minutes
Endrick has been carrying a problem since before the opening weekend and has sat in Jose Mourinho’s squads without leaving the bench. Per Diario AS, relayed by Madrid Universal, he is now over it and ready to play. The catch is how much: the coaching staff currently rate him as good for five to ten minutes, no more.
He is in the squad for tonight’s La Liga meeting with Rayo Vallecano at the Santiago Bernabeu (21:00 CEST), named alongside Vinicius Junior, Kylian Mbappe, Brahim Diaz, Yan Diomande and Carlos Espi in a six-man forward list. Whether he actually gets on is another matter, and will likely depend on how comfortable the scoreline is. Our Real Madrid vs Rayo Vallecano kick-off time and TV guide has the full viewing details.
The Carlos Espi problem
Here is the awkward part. Endrick was meant to be the first-choice understudy to Mbappe this season. That role has quietly been taken by Espi, who has made a strong start to the season and who is now, on current evidence, ahead in the pecking order.
Espi is a player Mourinho wanted. Promoting him and then finding that the promotion has blocked a teenager the club spent heavily on is the sort of problem that only looks obvious in hindsight, but it is a real one. With Mbappe and Vinicius nailed on, and Diomande, Arda Guler and Brahim all competing for what is left of the front three, Endrick is not fighting for a starting place. He is fighting for the substitute’s slot — and losing it.
The summer Real Madrid said no
This is the outcome Endrick himself tried to avoid. There was interest in him during the summer window, including from Roma, and loan moves were available. Real Madrid blocked all of it. Mourinho personally intervened to keep him, AS reports, and promised the forward minutes inside his project.
Two months on, that promise looks difficult to honour. It is not hard to see the logic from the club’s side — Endrick is 20, contracted long-term, and letting him go cheaply after one difficult year would be poor business. But a season spent watching from the bench in Madrid does considerably less for a young striker than a season playing badly somewhere else, and January will arrive with the same question attached. AC Milan have already been linked with a mid-season loan.
What could change the Endrick Real Madrid picture
Two things, realistically. The first is fitness: once he is past the five-to-ten-minute stage and available for a full half, Mourinho has a genuinely different weapon — a penalty-box centre-forward in a squad that is otherwise full of wide players drifting inside. The second is attrition. Madrid’s attack is not intact. Rodrygo remains a long-term absentee with a knee injury, and a September-to-December run that takes in La Liga, the Champions League league phase and the Clasico will not be survived by six forwards all staying healthy.
Endrick’s Madrid career has been a sequence of doors that open slightly later than he needs them to. Tonight, against a Rayo side arriving with a thinned-out squad of their own, one of them may open for ten minutes. He will have to make them count.
