Real Madrid started the season at Espanyol with the same hole in the squad they carried into pre-season, and with nine days of the window left the shortlist has been cut to almost nothing. The one name still standing, on the reporting of the last 24 hours, is Kees Smit — a Dutch midfielder valued at around €45m, described in the report as a Feyenoord player, and floated as the only realistic way José Mourinho ends August with a new man in the middle of the pitch. Martín Zubimendi has been knocked down, Adam Wharton has been knocked down, and what is left is cheaper, younger and a long way from certain.
- Why Real Madrid have denied that Zubimendi is a genuine target
- How Adam Wharton fell off the list, and what Crystal Palace have said
- What the reports actually say about Kees Smit — the €40–45m band, the profile and the doubts
- The Jorge Mendes thread connecting a signing to the exits Madrid still want
- The honest case for doing nothing before 31 August
Background: a summer of six signings and no number six
This has been the most active Real Madrid window in years. Marc Cucurella, Ibrahima Konaté, Bernardo Silva, Denzel Dumfries, Carlos Espí and Yan Diomande have all arrived, three of them defenders, and Endrick is back from his loan. The squad Mourinho inherited on 11 June has been rebuilt at both ends. The middle of it has not.
The reason is the one every Madridista knows. Madrid went for Rodri and did not get him, and he is now at Barcelona: the club aimed at the best controlling midfielder available and he went to the one team they most wanted to keep him from.
Everything since has been a search for a replacement idea rather than a replacement player. Zubimendi, Wharton, Víctor Froholdt, Nico González and Smit have all been attached to Madrid in August without any of them moving beyond the stage of a name in a newspaper — the same slow drift towards no signing at all the desk has been tracking for a fortnight.
The core of it: what the last 24 hours actually established
1. Zubimendi has been denied — again, and from inside the club
The Zubimendi story has come back around roughly once a week since the Rodri deal collapsed, and each time it has been pushed away. This is the firmest version yet. According to journalist José Miguel Villarroya, reported by Defensa Central and carried by Madrid Universal, Real Madrid have denied that the Arsenal midfielder is a genuine target in the closing weeks of the window, and denied too that Mourinho has been personally pushing for it.
The reason given is money rather than football. Arsenal are said to value Zubimendi at around €100m, having signed him only last year, and Madrid are not prepared to explore a deal at that number after the outlay already made this summer. The admiration is not in question — he is exactly the tempo-setter the side lacks — but Arsenal have never behaved like a club under pressure to sell.
2. Wharton is off the table because Crystal Palace will not sell
The other name went the same way, on the same day. Bernabéu Digital report that Adam Wharton has effectively been ruled out because Crystal Palace do not consider him for sale, a position The Sun Football is cited as confirming. Manchester City and Chelsea are both described as willing to pay heavily for the England midfielder and neither has moved Palace. Madrid were never going to be the club that broke that resistance.
The same Bernabéu Digital report contains the line that matters most for the rest of the window: given how the market has developed, Real Madrid have decided not to make a move in this position at all — unless something happens late, such as an unexpected exit or a very clear opportunity. That is the club’s default position now. Anything else is the exception.
3. Kees Smit is the exception the reports keep naming
Which brings us to the name. Villarroya’s report, as carried by Madrid Universal, puts Kees Smit forward as the more realistic option left on the board, available for somewhere in the region of €40m to €45m — a figure that sits far more comfortably inside what Madrid have left to spend than Arsenal’s valuation of Zubimendi. The report describes him as a Feyenoord midfielder.
He is not a Madrid Universal invention, either. Bernabéu Digital, writing hours earlier from Spanish sources, arrived at the same place: if Madrid sign a midfielder late, the realistic profile is younger and cheaper, and the two names offered are Angelo Stiller and Kees Smit. Two outlets, two sourcing routes, one name in common.
Nobody is claiming a deal is close. Madrid Universal are explicit that the move remains speculative, and they raise the obvious football objection themselves: Smit is naturally a box-to-box or attacking midfielder rather than a holder. Buying a €45m number eight to solve a number six problem is not a solution, it is a different purchase.
4. The Mendes thread, and why it matters more than the fee
The detail that gives the story legs is not the price. It is the agent. Smit is represented by Jorge Mendes, and the same report suggests that relationship could help facilitate exits for players Madrid want to move on — Raúl Asencio and Eduardo Camavinga are the two named — as part of a wider arrangement.
That is a familiar mechanism at this club at this point in August. Madrid have spent the month trying and failing to get Camavinga and Asencio off the wage bill, and Mendes has already been reported as the route through which an Asencio exit would be arranged. A package that moves one out and one in is the only version of this that makes financial sense in nine days — and, for the same reason, the version most likely to collapse, because it needs three or four clubs to agree at once.
The case against signing anyone
There is a serious argument, and the club appear to be making it internally, that Madrid should simply close the window and get on with the season. Mourinho has Valverde, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Camavinga, Jude Bellingham, Arda Güler and Bernardo Silva, and he opened the LaLiga campaign with Bernardo Silva alongside Valverde in a double pivot rather than with a specialist holder at all. That is a choice, not a shortage. Add the money already spent and a squad the club believe is two deep everywhere, and a late €45m punt on a player who has never held that role is hard to defend — particularly if the money is raised by selling Camavinga.
The counter is short, and it is the one Mourinho teams have always lived by: his sides are built from a stable defensive spine outwards, and the base of midfield is the one part of that spine Madrid have not touched. If Tchouaméni’s fitness wobbles — he was already left out of the squad at Espanyol with discomfort — the side is one problem away from Valverde playing a role he has never asked for.
Future outlook: what the last nine days probably look like
The window closes on 31 August. On the evidence of the last 24 hours, the likeliest outcome by some distance is that Real Madrid do nothing in central midfield and revisit it in January. That is what the club’s own briefing says, and what the failure of every other name this month points to.
- Most likely: no signing. Mourinho starts with the six he has and Madrid return to the market in January.
- Possible: a Smit deal that only moves once an exit does, with Mendes brokering both ends.
- Unlikely: Zubimendi. It needs Arsenal to drop from €100m in a fortnight.
- Wildcard: a late opportunity nobody is writing about yet — Bernabéu Digital’s running market blog has flagged the chance of last-minute surprises all week.
The thing to watch is not the incoming rumour but the outgoing one: nothing suggests Madrid buy a midfielder unless they sell one first, so an Asencio or Camavinga exit is the early warning that Smit is real.
Conclusion: a name worth knowing, not a deal worth expecting
Kees Smit is the last man standing on a list that began the summer with Rodri at the top of it, and that is the most honest way to put his candidacy. Two independent reports have him as the realistic option; neither has him as a signing. The fee fits, the agent fits, the profile does not obviously fit at all, and the club have told anyone who asks that they are not moving unless the market forces their hand.
Nine days is a long time in a Madrid August, but the sensible expectation tonight is that Mourinho begins and ends the window with the midfield he already had. Follow our running coverage of the midfield search for every development before 31 August.
