Two games into the 2026/27 season and Jose Mourinho appears to have made his mind up. According to AS, the Real Madrid back four the Portuguese wants for the big nights is already settled: Denzel Dumfries, Ibrahima Konate, Dean Huijsen and Marc Cucurella. Three of them arrived this summer. The fourth walked in a year earlier. It is, by some distance, the most heavily rebuilt defence Los Blancos have fielded in years.
The Real Madrid back four Mourinho keeps coming back to
Mourinho started three of the four against Real Sociedad on Wednesday, with Alvaro Carreras at left-back before Cucurella replaced him at half-time. The manager put the change down to Carreras carrying a first-half yellow card — but the shape of the second half told its own story.
Madrid were made to work in the first half by a Real Sociedad side with clear ideas. After the break, with Cucurella on and Mourinho’s adjustments made, they pulled away to win 4-1, Kylian Mbappe taking a hat-trick on the manager’s first night back at the Bernabeu.
The Spaniard, as Mundo Deportivo put it, has landed on his feet. Forty-five minutes was enough to show what he adds: an aggressive starting position, an understanding with Vinicius Junior ahead of him, and the appetite for one-against-one defending Mourinho demands of a full-back.
Dumfries has won the right-back argument — for now
The most consequential detail here is on the opposite flank. Trent Alexander-Arnold arrived as one of the most decorated right-backs in Europe. He is currently second in line.
Dumfries, signed from Inter, has started both league fixtures and is described by AS as the undisputed choice. The Dutchman spent years as a wing-back in a five and is comfortable covering vast amounts of grass alone, which lets Madrid push their line higher and press further up the pitch — the platform Mourinho wants for everything in front of it. We looked at how that selection battle developed through pre-season earlier this month.
The numbers from Wednesday back it up. Per Opta, Dumfries completed 15 passes in the final third, the fifth-highest total in the match, behind only Arda Guler (25), Mbappe and captain Federico Valverde (22 each) and Bernardo Silva (17). For a defender, that is a forward’s return.
Konate won more tackles than anyone on the pitch, matching Cucurella’s two, while Huijsen completed 69 of his 72 passes — 95.8% accuracy, which explains how quickly he has become the reference point for Madrid’s build-up. Collectively the defenders recovered 15 balls, seven inside Real Sociedad’s half, and Thibaut Courtois faced three shots on target all evening.
What it means for Rudiger, Militao and the rest
Nobody should read this as a closed shop. Antonio Rudiger remains a serious alternative at centre-back, and Eder Militao is working his way back from hamstring surgery with a return pencilled in for around mid-September. Raul Asencio is also sidelined, while Ferland Mendy is a long-term absentee alongside Rodrygo.
Per Marca, Aurelien Tchouameni and Endrick are both still training away from the group on individual programmes and look set to miss Sunday’s visit of newly promoted Malaga (17:00 CEST, Santiago Bernabeu), though several of the injured group have now been seen working with a ball at Valdebebas.
Which is the honest caveat. Mourinho has settled on a quartet in late August, when he has been able to pick one. The real test of a back four is not the second league game — it is the ninth in a month with Champions League football either side of it, and reports in Spain suggest Alexander-Arnold could get his first start against Malaga as the rotation begins.
Still, for a manager who has built his entire career on making sides difficult to score against, having identified the unit within a fortnight is no small thing. Madrid have conceded once in each of their opening two matches, both times immediately after taking the lead, and Mourinho has already made clear that eliminating those lapses is his priority. He now knows which four players he expects to do it.
