Two games into the new season, Yan Diomande has played just over half an hour of LaLiga football. Real Madrid’s most expensive signing is fit, registered and available — he simply cannot get past the three men in front of him.
The 19-year-old arrived from RB Leipzig this summer in a deal reported at around €125 million, rising to a possible €140m with add-ons, which Spanish outlets have described as the biggest fee in the club’s history. As Mundo Deportivo put it on Friday morning, the Ivorian has become the collateral damage of Madrid’s newly humming front three.
Yan Diomande Real Madrid game time: two cameos, 30 minutes
The numbers are stark. Diomande came on in the second half at Espanyol with the game level at 1-1, in what finished as a 1-2 win for Jose Mourinho’s side. Four days later, in the 4-1 demolition of Real Sociedad, he replaced Vinicius Junior in the 84th minute with the result long settled. Total game time across the opening two rounds: a shade over 30 minutes.
That is not a verdict on the player so much as a verdict on everyone else. Kylian Mbappe scored a hat-trick on Mourinho’s Bernabeu homecoming, Jude Bellingham laid on two goals in his sharpest performance in a white shirt for months, and Vinicius added a goal and an assist. After two seasons of the trio never quite clicking, the Portuguese appears to have found the combination — and no coach breaks that up in August for a teenager.
Arda Guler has narrowed the door further
Diomande’s problem is not only the front three. Mourinho has set up in a 4-2-3-1 in both competitive matches, with Arda Guler starting from the right and drifting infield when Madrid have possession. That hybrid role has quietly removed the need for a second orthodox winger.
Speaking on Cadena SER’s El Larguero, and quoted by Mundo Deportivo, Tomas Roncero argued the fit simply is not there yet. “Right now he can’t get into the XI,” he said. “He can’t, first, because if you put Diomande in, it’s to play much more vertically. But then who supplies the football to the team? Who feeds the players up front?” His conclusion: start the Ivorian and “Bellingham has to drop 15 metres deeper”, stripping Madrid of the free role that made him so effective against Real Sociedad.
Former Madrid midfielder Alvaro Benito made the tactical case for Guler on the same programme. “The Turk’s tendency is to come inside,” he said. “He was often behind Mbappe in the build-up, forming a square with Bernardo Silva, Valverde and Bellingham in midfield. He is working a lot without the ball. Guler knows his position isn’t in the double pivot, and that with Bellingham in this form there is huge competition at No. 10.”
A queue, not a crisis
Diomande is not alone in the waiting room. Brahim Diaz got no minutes at all at Espanyol before making his seasonal bow against La Real, and the right flank that might have opened up for either of them is a longer-term question with Rodrygo out injured into 2027.
There is context worth holding onto, too. Diomande turned 19 this year, and a record fee for a teenager is a bet on 2029 as much as on this autumn. Mourinho’s record with young wide players suggests minutes arrive when the schedule thickens rather than when the price tag demands them — and with the Champions League league phase looming after the international break, the schedule is about to thicken considerably.
For now, Los Blancos sit top of LaLiga with two wins from two and turn their attention to Malaga. The club-record signing will almost certainly start that one on the bench. In a squad this deep, that is the cost of doing business at the Bernabeu.
