Mbappé and Bellingham witness it: details of Asensio's injury expose Real Madrid's nightmare
The Merengue wound has not yet healed: and Asensio's operation adds to the pressure
Raúl Asencio needs surgery, and his injury has dragged Real Madrid's medical department back into the spotlight. The controversy stems from a string of cases the Spanish club failed to handle well.
Real Madrid confirmed on Wednesday that their Spanish defender had gone under the knife after suffering an injury to the bone of his right shin. Press reports suggested he would be out for two to four months.
According to the newspaper "Marca", the anger surrounding the injury comes down to a surgery believed to have arrived far too late and at the worst possible time.
The report added: "Those close to Asencio have long questioned the insistence on conservative treatment for his recovery, but Real Madrid's medical staff chose to postpone the operation until now."
Asencio first picked up the shin problem in January. He went into surgery in October, nine months later. He never fully recovered during that spell, battling recurring bouts of pain, yet he refused to give up and kept competing and training in a very limited way.
The first solution was a minimally invasive treatment aimed at removing abnormal cells from the scar tissue on the shin bone, where poorly healed bony protrusions had formed. That initial plan failed, which pushed the club to weigh up surgery at the end of the season.
Doctors wanted to use the summer to treat the injury and keep his time away from competition to a minimum, as they did not see surgery as the right call at that stage. The procedure proposed for the summer was rest, rehabilitation and time for the area to recover.
The idea was simple: let his shin respond to rest after months of intensive use. That second plan did not work either, and in August Asencio suffered another setback.
Only then did the doctors finally give the green light for surgery. Those close to Asencio believe the moment had already passed.
He will now go under the knife as the season gets under way, sidelining him for several months and shaping the rest of his campaign. It is a harsh blow for a defender convinced that, at the peak of his form, he could earn the trust of coach José Mourinho.
Each injury aside, the pattern points to a structural problem Real Madrid have yet to fix. The club cannot shake the spectre of medical tension that keeps unsettling the dressing room, with protocols and decisions that leave some players cold. The physical management, from coaches to medical staff, has changed hands repeatedly of late, laying bare the problems within the squad.
Previous cases
Last season, Real Madrid's medical crisis hit its peak as the injuries piled up. The club made no signings in the winter window to strengthen the team, but they did shake up the medical and fitness staffs.
Dr Niko Mihić won back his old role in Madrid as medical supervisor. Pintus, pushed off the front line of the team's fitness training after Xabi Alonso arrived, took the reins again once Alonso left and Álvaro Arbeloa came in.
Yet nothing changed, and the disagreements rumbled on. Several cases put Real Madrid's medical staff on the spot, none more hotly debated than Kylian Mbappé's knee injury. The French striker had been struggling with a problem in his left knee since 7 December, initially diagnosed as a sprain of the lateral ligament.
Three months and several trips to the treatment room later, the injury had not improved. It was reclassified as a partial tear of the posterior cruciate ligament, and Mbappé's decision to travel to Paris for treatment exposed the scale of the row and the player's frustration.
Jude Bellingham's case raised more doubts. He got injured on 1 February against Rayo Vallecano with a muscular problem, initially expected to keep him out for about four weeks. He ended up missing 49 days, leaving the sense that Real Madrid could not get the England international back to his best during that crucial stretch.
Other notable cases hurt less on the pitch but chipped away at trust in the medical staff. Eduardo Camavinga sat out nine days with toothache, a spell that looked oddly long for the complaint.
Álvaro Carreras told a similar story. The full-back first complained of calf pain after taking a knock, and for days the club treated it as nothing more than a bruise. That let him keep training under a protocol separate from the injury protocol, working inside the club's facilities, as Madrid reported daily.
Later tests, though, confirmed a muscle tear in his calf, an injury that kept him off the pitch for two weeks. Then came Éder Militão's relapse in April of the muscular injury that had already cost him half the season, a setback that hurt him badly and bled into the current campaign too, with the defender still out after surgery. Now Asencio's case reopens a wound Real Madrid seem unable to heal.
