Spending €10m on free agent Trent Alexander-Arnold, delaying Jude Bellingham's surgery and how Real Madrid have chosen to go all out to win the Club World Cup

It was football's worst kept secret through the second half of the season that Trent Alexander-Arnold was set to leave Liverpool and join Madrid. However, not even the most hopeful of Reds fan would have believed that they would earn a fee for their impending free agent.

Most assumed that Alexander-Arnold would take a month off before joining Madrid on July 1 at the start of the new football calendar. However, reports surfaced in the days following Alexander-Arnold's confirmation of his Liverpool exit that Los Blancos were keen to negotiate an early release from his contract so as to take advantage of FIFA's pre-Club World Cup transfer window.

Despite that, it still came as something of a surprise when it was confirmed that Madrid had in fact paid up by handing over €10m (£8.5m/$11.5m) to Liverpool for their homegrown right-back. For the Reds, that came as a welcome - and unexpected - boost to their coffers. But for Madrid, it was the first real statement of intent when it came to this summer's tournament.

Alexander-Arnold is an elite talent, and with Dani Carvajal still recovering from the ACL injury he picked up in October, Madrid did not have a fully fit right-back to bring with them to the U.S. They could have waited for Alexander-Arnold to see out the final month of his deal on Merseyside and added him to their squad for the knockout rounds, but Madrid wanted him immediately, and were willing to pay over €3m per potential group-stage appearance to have him from the very start of the competition.

Madrid would surely have got through a group containing Al-Hilal, Red Bull Salzburg and Pachuca without the England international, but Alexander-Arnold will of course make them a more formidable outfit from the jump. His addition should also help new manager Xabi Alonso implement some of his tactical ideas just that little bit earlier. Either way, it sent a signal that Madrid mean business on the pitch this summer.

There is no other way to spin it: Madrid's defence was bad last year. They spent most of the season with Raul Asencio and Antonio Rudiger as their only fully fit centre-backs, and even then Rudiger was playing on only one healthy knee and had to undergo surgery before the end of the campaign. Over the course of the season, Carvajal, Eder Militao and David Alaba all sustained long-term injuries while Ferland Mendy could never stay fit for more than a couple of months at a time. Madrid were decimated at the back, and it showed.

And so while Alexander-Arnold is an addition to their defensive ranks, it is the arrival of Dean Huijsen that is expected to help shore up that porous backline. In a span of a year, Huijsen went from unwanted at Juventus to Europe's most-wanted following his debut season at Bournemouth. The lanky Spaniard has already shown himself to be a very good centre-back, and has all of the traits required to become a world-class defender. At just 20, he has plenty of scope, and that's why Liverpool and Chelsea were so keen to add him to their respective squads before Madrid made their move and triggered Huijsen's £50m ($68m) release clause.

He was officially unveiled at Santiago Bernabeu on June 9, where club president Florentino Perez hailed him as "one of the great players to emerge in football in recent years." Huijsen will get his chance to prove as much this summer.

Madrid almost added a third fresh face to Alonso's squad, too, after beating Paris Saint-Germain to the signing of highly-rated River Plate teenager Franco Mastantuono, for whom they are paying €40m (£33m/$45m). Madrid wanted the 17-year-old to join them in the States, but River rejected that approach so as to include Mastantuono on their own Club World Cup roster.

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Perhaps the most revealing move of Madrid's summer when it comes to taking the Club World Cup seriously, though, is the fact that they opted to continue kicking the can that is Jude Bellingham's long-awaited shoulder surgery down the road. The Englansd midfielder first hurt his shoulder in November 2023, when he partially dislocated it against Rayo Vallecano. He missed a handful of games at the time, and it was reported in the Spanish press that he would need an operation. Bellingham, though, played through the pain, and has required heavy strapping on his left shoulder for over a year now.

Bellingham has routinely been advised to undergo surgery, but the business of the club calendar had meant that he hasn't had room to do so. Given the Club World Cup's still debatable status in the global game, this summer felt like the ideal window so that he could be back fit for the start of the 2025-26 campaign and subsequently could start looking ahead to the 2026 World Cup in a pain-free manner.

However, both Madrid and Bellingham have agreed to delay the operation until after the Club World Cup - ensuring that he will be available for the month-long event in America. As a consequence, he will miss the remainder of pre-season, and possibly two months of the new season. It's clearly a risk Madrid are willing to take and highlights where their priorities lie in terms of trophies.

And while one Madrid midfielder waits for a much-needed break, another has joined up with the squad when he would have been forgiven for resting up and preparing for the next chapter in his storied career.
When Luka Modric left the Bernabeu pitch teary-eyed in May, it was assumed that he had played his last game for Madrid. It seemed the perfect way to go, waling off the pitch at that great cathedral of football and conclude his brilliant Blancos career on home soil. Apparently not.

While free-agent-to-be Modric is close to securing a move to AC Milan to help fill the gaping hole left by the departure of Tijjani Reijnders to Manchester City, Modric is sticking with Madrid for the Club World Cup. Given that he only played sparingly over the course of the campaign and that his ageing legs might not be able to offer much in the searing American heat, having Modric be part of a squad that Alonso is attempting to mould in his own image feels unnecessary. But zoom out, and it's the kind of move that makes sense for a Madrid who are intent of winning.

Modric brings veteran experience. With Toni Kroos gone and with an otherwise fairly young spine, Alonso could do with someone he trusts in the set up to help implement his initial ideas. He and Modric did, after all, used to be Madrid team-mates, and so having someone he can trust, if only for a few weeks, could prove vital in the long run.

Madrid's motives for going to such great lengths to win the Club World Cup are two-fold. On the pitch, this is a Madrid squad who are coming off a chastening, trophy-less campaign. They finished a distant second to Barcelona in La Liga, lost to the Blaugrana in both the Copa del Rey and Supercopa finals, and were outclassed by Arsenal in the Champions League quarter-finals.

By the time the season ended, the only thing anyone in Madrid white had to play for was Kylian Mbappe and the European Golden Shoe, though that accolade came at the end of a debut campaign where the France captain's presence confused Madrid's other star attackers to the point that Vincius Jr, Rodrygo and Bellingham scored just seven La Liga goals between them following the turn of the year.

That fall from grace led to Ancelotti's departure and the arrival of Alonso, who has now been tasked with basically overseeing a pre-season campaign where results, not just performances, are massively important. It remains to be seen whether he chooses to install his favoured 3-4-2-1 formation or opts to stick with the 4-3-3 that has brought Madrid so much success in the past, but either way his priority should be to find a formation that gets the best out of both Mbappe and Vinicius.

If Alonso is able to bring about that immediate improvement, then there is no doubt that Madrid have the talent to go all the way this summer. It is, however, a big 'if' right now.

But perhaps the main driving force behind Madrid's apparent desperation to win the Club World Cup is the financial boost that awaits the victors. It was telling that Ancelotti, a coach who isn't necessarily known for wading into the economics of top-level football, brought up how much Los Blancos were set to earn for competing as an argument as to why his side and others might not take part. It's not a stretch to suggest that the Italian was perhaps parroting a talking point that was doing the rounds among the Madrid hierarchy when it came to discussing their potential participation.

Ancelotti's estimates have since, however, been blown out of the water. Rather than earning a mere €20m for the entirety of the tournament, Madrid are now set to be on the receiving end of a participation fee in excess of €30m (£25.5m/$35m), while monetary prizes will be handed out for teams that advance through the rounds. Should Alonso's side win all three of their group games, they will earn $6m (£4.4m) - around half of the money they paid to acquire Alexander-Arnold for those matches. Should they triumph in the final on July 13, they stand to take home $130m (£97m).

Such a financial boost would certainly appeal to Perez and the Madrid board, and thus winning in America has become about more than just prestige for the 15-time European champions. Being crowned global top dogs would come with both sporting and economic cache; taking a few risks to do so is worth the reward and then some.