José Mourinho is a legend. Is this why he’s ended up back at Real Madrid in 2026? Surely, it can’t be a result of his impeccable tactics and results over recent years.
I talked about Mourinho’s Fenerbahçe tactics and before I knew it, that appointment was history.
But are Mourinho’s tactics implemented for Real Madrid? And is he destined to maintain this job for longer than he has in recent past appointments?
Here’s what I think about The Special One‘s plan and execution.
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Career Prior to Managing Real Madrid (Again)
There aren’t many managers with a more famous story than that of Jose Mourinho.
This tale can be split into two parts, if we’re being honest.
The first part is all about beating the odds. The Portuguese had a short playing career before becoming Bobby Robson’s translator and tactical assistant at Sporting and then FC Barcelona.
Later, Mourinho became a head coach in his native Portugal, eventually leading FC Porto to Champions League glory, and making them the most unlikely winners of the trophy in the last 3-4 decades.
He followed this up with more success at Chelsea, Internazionale and, in 2010, Real Madrid.
The second part of the story is filled with much less success and plenty of complaining in a media system always obsessed with getting a good quote from the manager.
He’s managed Manchester United, Tottenham, AS Roma, Fenerbahçe, and Benfica over the past 12 years. The results have seemingly declined year after year.
In 2026, with a fantastic but undisciplined squad, Real Madrid shockingly came calling again for Mourinho. He arrived promising to be a changed man.
Mourinho’s Tactical Philosophy
Jose Mourinho is one of the most famous managers in the world. He’s, famously, a pragmatist. He’s a manager who got a lot of great results early in his career while playing a defensive, anti-Guardiola-like style of football.
Mourinho’s style emphasises discipline, tactical rigidity, and reacting to opponents’ actions.
But let’s be clear here. I don’t think that this is what brought Mourinho back to a team of Real Madrid’s stature.
After all, for the past decade, Mourinho’s results have been poor, and he has shuffled from one job to the other. Recently, he’s even fallen off the radar of the Top 5 leagues.
Instead, I think, Mourinho is at Real Madrid solely to manage the egos of his world-famous players.
Frankly, only he and a handful of other managers have the charisma and silverware to be able to command this kind of authority.
Formations and Adaptability
José Mourinho, in my opinion, was brought in to bring the kind of stability that was missing in the 2025/26 season for Real.
This also applies to the formation. And it applies to the way this formation adapts in the stages of a game.
Mourinho plays his favourite formation, the 4-2-3-1. It’s one that he’s helped to make popular across Europe. At the moment, in fact, there are still very few teams who play anything else.
Most importantly, Mourinho chooses to play with a double pivot, instead of one defensive midfielder. Why? The reason is quite obvious. Two is better than one, and Real’s midfield in the recent past tended to leave an awful lot of gaps.
This, however, can create a lack of balance in other areas. Let me try and explain further.
Real Madrid in Defence
The most telling stat that I’ve read concerns distance covered collectively by teams in the Premier League compared to La Liga. Not only does the last-place team in the EPL exceed how much the most athletic La Liga team has run. Most striking is the fact that Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid is bottom last of those 40 teams mentioned.
Wasn’t Real Madrid supposed to have some of the most exciting young talent at its disposal?
Is this a strategy?
Yes, and no. Mourinho is slowly implementing his classical football philosophy at Real Madrid. It’s a reactive tactic. Los Blancos act based on what the opponents do. (And when opponents sit back as Atletico Madrid recently did against Real, problems start to emerge).
Mourinho’s Real Madrid doesn’t do running because, as he’s explained in the past, actively engaging an opponent creates room for errors. This applies to possession, but just as well to pressing.
Rather than chase the ball around, Real engage in a highly compact mid-block.
Essentially, what this means is that, in order to score against Real, teams need to move through an overcrowded midfield area. Against Elche, the player position map shows 9 players sitting around the halfway line with the wing backs providing the width.
Where are the pain points, though? On the flanks! Once the honeymoon was over, Mourinho had to contend with the fact that he had some of the best attacking wide defenders in the game at his disposal.
However, players like Trent Alexander-Arnold are notoriously slow on the return to formation. Against a team like Elche, it becomes the job of the defensive midfielder or inside forward to compensate. Even more frequently, Mourinho might choose the more tactically disciplined Denzel Dumfries to handle a defensive full-back role.
Another trick that Mourinho uses when deploying Alexander-Arnold in an attacking wing-back role is to have the opposite full-back, most likely Marc Cucurella, maintain a defensive role. It means that, at times, Real essentially is left playing with a back three.
Real’s Build-Up Play
This is where it gets sticky in my opinion. Real Madrid’s squad may have an ego issue. This is, however, determined by the sheer talent (and reputation) of those players.
Emphasising skill, however, is not Mourinho’s style.
Ideally, Mourinho would like Real to give up building up altogether. Instead, he wants his team to break on the counter-attack at speed.
If this sounds disappointing, you should remember that Mourinho’s Ronaldo-powered Real Madrid played the same way very much.
These quick transitions, however, can be made possible by the speed of the attackers and the passing expertise of players like Fede Valverde, Alexander-Arnold and, especially, Arda Güler. Mourinho has taken a particular shine to the Egyptian midfielder.
Los Blancos in Attack
There are two things worth prefacing this part with, I think. The first is that Mourinho’s first Real Madrid stint involved both playing defensive football and also scoring a record number of goals.
The second is that while that Real had players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, this one has players like Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Jr and Jude Bellingham. On paper, this is, in my opinion, the best attacking line-up of any team in the world.
So, how does this Real side go about scoring loads of goals?
It’s not rocket science. In fact, it’s a style that was very popular during the 1990s.
Goal-scoring opportunities, typically, come either from the wing-backs crossing the ball or from the playmaker who sits behind the main striker.
That playmaker is Jude Bellingham. The main striker is Kylian Mbappe.
This then begs the question: what happens with Vinicius, who often occupies the same left-side channels as Mbappe?
This is hardly a problem against weaker opposition, who will find it hard to mark two world-class attackers. But the question has not yet been fully answered against tougher opposition.
Against Internazionale, in an important victory, Vinicius practically played on the flank while Mbappe sat in the centre. However, this may be rather the exception, with the Italians allowing Real a lot of space on the night.
What Next for Real Madrid and Jose Mourinho?
I’d like to think that Real Madrid can win the Champions League and La Liga. That would make a great end to the story.
But it seems unlikely.
Mourinho is in Madrid to whip this team of superstars into shape. After that, it’s time for another manager.
Results, however, can shorten his stay even further.
On the other hand, this is one of the best squads of players that Real has had in years.
Frankly, this is all very exciting because anything could happen, which is not something that you can say very often in football nowadays.
