Arda Guler becomes first World Cup player to return to Real Madrid training | OneFootball

It has been one complete week since Jose Mourinho started preseason training at Real Madrid, but during this week, he has had to train only the available first team players, who had not participated in the World Cup 2026 and were fully fit, and some promising talents from the youth academy.

Most of the bigger stars of the Merengue team were unavailable because of the World Cup, which ended last night with Spain and Marc Cucurella lifting the trophy. While the tournament had already ended for some of Los Blancos’ players by the time the preseason started, they were still unavailable because they were entitled to at least three weeks of vacation.

Now, as Diario AS has noted, the first player to have participated in the World Cup has already returned to train at Valdebebas under Mourinho, namely, Arda Guler. The Real Madrid midfielder was one of the main protagonists for Turkiye in this competition, but, unfortunately, his team was eliminated only in the group stage. He scored one goal in this competition, in the game against United States.

The changes of this summer are going to be quite a mixed blessing for him. With Mourinho, he has a coach that relies a lot on an attacking midfielder, and who already valued the Turk when he was working at Fenerbahce. Reports suggest that Guler is going to remain an important player for the Portuguese coach.

Meanwhile, the arrival of Bernardo Silva will make it significantly more difficult to retain a starting spot at Real Madrid. It remains to be seen whether he will continue playing centrally, or will have to move to the right wing to carve out a place in a star-studded team, and these upcoming weeks before the start of the next season will be crucial for him to impress Jose Mourinho.