The last resort: will Mourinho throw the Castilla wonderkid into Inter's jaws to save Real Madrid?

Real Madrid's midfield is enduring one of its worst crises this season, with Valverde the only holding player genuinely available for the European clash.

Bernardo Silva, Camavinga and Arda Guler all miss out through suspension, while Tchouameni and Thiago Pitarch are sidelined by injury. The latter pair have returned to group training, but sources close to the club confirm it is impossible for them to start. Even a place on the bench remains in doubt.

Five absences at once have painted a bleak picture in Mourinho's operations room. It has forced him to throw the doors of Castilla wide open.

The second reason lay on the pitch. Watching the Castilla match last Saturday, Mourinho set out a clever plan to protect and test the two young players. Cestero played the entire first half before Sergio Martinez replaced him after the break.

A few minutes were all it took for both to dazzle the Portuguese coach.

According to "Marca", Cestero, the captain of Castilla's midfield, did not settle merely for imposing his rhythm and confidence in the middle of the park. He crowned his performance with a superb goal that gave the reserve side the lead. Sergio Martinez, meanwhile, made his first appearance in the Castilla shirt and announced himself as a major talent, flashing his skill and a strong personality despite not being fully in tune with his new teammates.

In the market of predictions inside Valdebebas, the balance tips clearly in Cestero's favour. The reasons are logical.

Having spent the entire summer with the first team, the midfielder has grown into Mourinho's ideas and the group's rhythm. He knows the senior side too. Last season he featured in five official matches, one as a starter, across three different competitions: La Liga, the Champions League and the Copa del Rey.

At Castilla he was not just a squad player but the undisputed captain under Álvaro Arbeloa and Julián López de Lerma. He fought alongside them through decisive battles in the promotion play-offs for the second division and in the finals of the UEFA Youth League, which Real Madrid won.

His market value of seven million euros, according to "Transfermarkt", makes him currently the most expensive graduate of "La Fábrica". Arbeloa himself put it in unforgettable terms last October: "He is the best number 6 in Spain at the moment." Little wonder, then, that Mourinho kept him close from day one of preparation.

Sergio Martínez, by contrast, is a bet on the future, a rapidly rising talent whose impact was immediate and stunning.

He started the season with Racing and has more than 300 minutes of second-division experience under his belt from last season. Yet the recentness of his move to Valdebebas, combined with a lack of training sessions, may be the one thing keeping him behind Cisternino in the race to be ready for Inter.

Beyond the youth option, Mourinho has few solutions that don't involve tactical improvisation.

The first and most realistic option is to push Jude Bellingham back into the holding role alongside Valverde, then fill the playmaker gap in a 4-2-3-1 with Brahim Diaz, Diomande or Espi behind Vinicius and Mbappe up front.

Reshaping the system offers a second route: switch to a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 by deploying Trent Alexander-Arnold as a third midfielder alongside Valverde and Bellingham, doubling up on the right flank with Dumfries and Trent together.

Then comes the revolutionary option. Mourinho could spring a tactical surprise by pushing defender Huijsen into midfield to exploit his passing quality and physical strength, leaning on the Rudiger and Konate pairing at the heart of the defence.