Scott McTominay Real Madrid talk is not something anyone had pencilled in for the first week of September, and yet here it is — delivered by the player himself, in a single sentence that Madridistas will read twice. Asked whether he could turn down a call from Jose Mourinho about a move to the Santiago Bernabeu, the Napoli midfielder did not bother reaching for the diplomatic answer.
"If Mourinho called me about Real Madrid, honestly, I’d think about it," McTominay told Corriere della Sera, in comments carried by AS and relayed by Madrid Universal.
It is not a transfer. It is not even a rumour, strictly speaking — there is no reported bid, no reported contact, and nothing from Valdebebas. But it lands in the one spot where this squad is genuinely thin, and it comes from a player with a real, documented history with the manager. That combination is why it is worth more than the usual deadline-week noise.
The one line that matters
Mourinho gave McTominay his senior debut at Manchester United against Arsenal in the 2016/17 season. The following campaign the Scot made 23 appearances as the Portuguese began trusting him in serious Premier League and Champions League fixtures, and at the end of that season Mourinho handed him the Manager’s Player of the Year award — with established senior midfielders in the building who might have expected it first.
Players remember that sort of thing. Almost a decade on, the two careers have diverged completely: Mourinho is back at Real Madrid, appointed in June 2026 on a contract that runs to 2029, while McTominay left Old Trafford for Naples and rebuilt himself as an important player in Serie A. The relationship, by every account, survived the distance.
So when the question was put to him, he answered like someone who owes his first big break to the man now sitting in the Bernabeu dugout. That is the whole story, and it is enough.
Why the Scott McTominay Real Madrid idea has a hole to fill
Here is the context that gives the quote its edge. Real Madrid closed the summer window without signing a single central midfielder.
They tried. The pursuit of Rodri was the defining failure of the window — Los Blancos got close, made a verbal offer reported at around €50 million to Manchester City, and then watched the Spaniard choose Barcelona instead. And that may not even have been the biggest miss. According to a report from The Athletic, carried by Madrid Universal, Enzo Fernandez was actually Mourinho’s preferred midfield target this summer — a claim Real Madrid have publicly denied, having issued a press release stating they had no interest in the player. Fernandez has since joined Manchester City in a deal worth close to €150 million, the most expensive transfer of the summer.
Two elite midfielders identified. Neither signed. The midfield went unreinforced, and Mourinho starts a title campaign with the engine room he inherited.
The squad maths are tight, too. Per Mundo Deportivo, Mourinho has 26 players to work with, 25 of them registered with the first team — the maximum permitted — with Thiago Pitarch registered to Castilla despite being a first-team player. Six arrived this summer (Ibrahima Konate, Denzel Dumfries, Marc Cucurella, Bernardo Silva, Yan Diomande and Carlos Espi) and six left. Of those arrivals, exactly one, Bernardo Silva, is a midfielder — and he came on a free from Manchester City rather than as a solution to the Rodri problem.
The Inter game is the pressure point
The thinness stops being theoretical next week. Arda Guler, Bernardo Silva and Eduardo Camavinga are all suspended for the Champions League opener against Inter, per Managing Madrid, carrying over cards from last season’s European campaign. Three midfielders unavailable in one night.
Aurelien Tchouameni would be the obvious answer alongside captain Federico Valverde in a double pivot, but the Frenchman has been working back from injury and had not completed a full session with the group when that report was published. Pitarch, the other natural option, is dealing with a knee problem of his own. Jude Bellingham is in the form of his life and will play, but he is not a holding midfielder and Mourinho has not used him as one.
Which leaves the manager, as Managing Madrid put it, thinking outside the box for a European debut against one of the tougher draws in the league phase. Solve it once and it is a curiosity. Face that shortage in February, in a title race, and it becomes a January transfer window.
Napoli hold every card
None of which makes this straightforward. Quite the opposite.
McTominay is under contract at Napoli until June 2028 and earning a reported €5.6 million a season, and there is nothing in the available information to suggest the Italian club have any interest in selling. He is 29, settled in Naples, central to what they do, and entering the years a midfielder tends to enjoy most. A club in that position does not negotiate; it simply says no, and the conversation ends there.
Then there is the calendar. Napoli are in the Champions League themselves and fighting at the top in Italy; a mid-season sale of a first-choice midfielder is the sort of thing that costs a coach his season. Any deal would need Madrid to make an offer large enough to be worth the disruption, in a window where they historically prefer to do nothing at all. Florentino Perez’s Madrid buy in June, not in January, and they have broken that habit only for genuine emergencies.
He is also not the profile Madrid were chasing all summer. Rodri and Fernandez are deep-lying controllers — players who take the ball off the centre-backs and set the tempo. McTominay is a runner, an arriver in the box, a midfielder whose value shows up in the final third. He would give Mourinho something the squad does not currently have, but he would not be a like-for-like fix for the hole Rodri was meant to fill.
That said, there is a version of this that makes sense. Mourinho’s Madrid have looked most convincing when the midfield has legs in it, and a player who arrives late in the box would give Mbappe and Bellingham a third runner rather than a fourth passer. The Scot also knows the manager’s demands without needing a translation, which counts for something in a dressing room still learning them.
And Madrid’s own recruitment logic argues against it. The summer was built on value: two free transfers, a squad reshaped without galactico-scale outlay, and academy sales topping the books up. Paying a premium in January to prise a 29-year-old out of a club who do not want to sell is a different kind of transaction entirely.
What this actually is
A player, asked a hypothetical, gave an honest answer about a manager he owes something to. That is all that has happened, and treating it as anything more would be dishonest.
But it is a reminder of two things. Mourinho’s name still opens doors that other managers’ names do not — McTominay is the second high-profile figure this week to talk up the Bernabeu project, after Robert Lewandowski conceded that Madrid look stronger with the Portuguese in charge. And this squad has one obvious gap, one that survived the entire window without being closed.
Nine points from nine has bought Mourinho quiet. Betis away and then Inter at home, with three midfielders missing for the second of them, will tell us whether that quiet holds. If it does not, expect the January lists to reappear — and expect at least one name on them to have already said the door is open.
