The reasons behind Real Madrid deciding against January reinforcements – report | OneFootball

The 2025-26 winter transfer window has closed and, once again, Real Madrid chose to stand still, passing up the chance to strengthen the squad.

In recent times, the club rarely reinforces the roster in January. In fact, it has now been seven years since Los Blancos last signed a player in the winter window.

The most recent arrival at the Santiago Bernabeu midway through a season was Brahim Díaz, signed from Manchester City for €17 million.

Why was nobody signed?

The likes of Atletico Madrid and Manchester City spent heavily to strengthen their squad while Barcelona also brought in Joao Cancelo. But not only Real Madrid did not sign anyone, there were hardly any concrete links to any players.

And, according to MARCA, it is because since the start of the year Real Madrid had already made it clear that there would be no winter reinforcements.

The club hierarchy maintains the view that the squad is sufficiently large, despite the high number of injuries that have affected the group in recent seasons, with the current campaign being no exception.

This injury crisis even led, for example, to a situation against Rayo Vallecano this past weekend, where three of the four defenders who finished the match were actually midfielders.

No January signings again. (Photo by Aitor Alcalde/Getty Images)

Despite that, Real Madrid believe their squad has enough depth to compete for the club’s main objectives, which are always La Liga and the Champions League.

The defeat in the Spanish Super Cup final and the early Copa del Rey elimination against Albacete have not altered the roadmap set out at Valdebebas.

The changes that were made

What has changed, however, are measures taken to try to alleviate the ongoing physical problems affecting the players. First came the return of Niko Mihic to head the medical department, followed by the return of Antonio Pintus to oversee physical conditioning.

This was one of the points of friction that ultimately led to the departure of Xabi Alonso from the club.

This season, Real Madrid have a total of 23 first-team squad registrations, two fewer than the allowed limit, with four summer signings being made and Gonzalo Garcia being promoted to the senior setup.

The club hierarchy considers this group to be sufficient, also taking into account the occasional, albeit very limited, appearances of players from Castilla.

As a result, the idea was never to expand the squad, but rather to try to streamline it – Endrick was loaned out and Fran Garcia also almost left for Bournemouth before Los Blancos decided to pull the plug on the deal.