For six years the answer was always yes. Right-back in a crisis, right wing when the wingers were injured, a box-to-box eight, an emergency shift at centre-half — Fede Valverde went wherever Real Madrid needed him and never once complained about it. With the LaLiga opener at Espanyol now days away, the Valverde role is somehow still the least settled thing about José Mourinho’s team.
Why it matters: according to Defensa Central, whose journalist Carlos Carpio relayed the mood at Valdebebas on Wednesday morning, Mourinho has not made up his mind where the Uruguayan should play. Not at the heart of the midfield. Not on the right wing. And the position left on the list is the one Valverde himself likes least.
What the report actually says about the Valverde role
The claim, carried by Madrid Universal via Defensa Central, is that the depth Madrid have added this summer — six new signings, competition in every line — has left one of the club’s most important footballers without an obvious address.
“From what I’m told, it’s not clear where he’s going to play. I don’t see him at the heart of the play, just as I didn’t last year,” Carpio said. “He doesn’t have those qualities. I’m told that Mourinho doesn’t see him on the right wing — we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
Two things are worth separating there. The line about the heart of midfield is the journalist’s own judgement, offered as such. The line about the right wing is what he says he has been told. Neither is a club statement. Read at that distance, it is still revealing: Valverde has spent pre-season drifting inside from the touchline into central midfield, which is exactly where the same report suggests Mourinho is not convinced by him.
This is not a story about a player losing his place. Valverde has started nearly everything that mattered for half a decade, and he was glowing about Mourinho’s early impact when he spoke in Budapest. It is a story about finding the right job for a footballer who can do six of them adequately and none exclusively.
The right-back option nobody is keen on
There is one position the Uruguayan knows better than most, because Madrid have leaned on him there whenever the squad thinned out. The report is blunt about it: Valverde does not feel fully comfortable at right-back, and never has.
He may not be asked to fill in there again. That emergency has largely been legislated out of existence this summer — Trent Alexander-Arnold and Denzel Dumfries are already competing for the same shirt, which is precisely the specialist cover the squad lacked in the seasons when Valverde kept filling in.
A report that sits awkwardly with Tuesday’s
Here is the wrinkle. On Tuesday, hours before Defensa Central said nothing was clear, Bernabéu Digital, citing Mario Cortegana, reported the opposite: that Mourinho would use Valverde in one position and one position only, as a holding midfielder in his double pivot. Two well-sourced Madrid outlets, barely half a day apart, reaching opposite conclusions about the same player.
Both can be partly right, which is usually how these weeks go. The pivot is the busiest corner of the squad: Bernardo Silva is expected to start the season in midfield, Bernabéu Digital expect Aurélien Tchouaméni back in the squad for the opener after a physical complaint, and Managing Madrid report that Mourinho has settled on a 4-2-3-1 in which there are two deep slots for three or four candidates. Somebody has to be the one who moves.
Mourinho, for his part, has spent this week insisting he is happy with what he has. “I like this squad. We have solutions, quality, and players,” he said in the interview where he also told El Chiringuito that Real Madrid is on a different level. Solutions, plural, is a generous word for a selection headache.
Espanyol away will settle more than any report can. Watch where Fede Valverde stands when the whistle goes — that is the answer, and everything before it is a briefing.
