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Real Madrid Now Pay More for Mourinho After Benfica Clause Lapsed

Real Madrid’s election delay let Jose Mourinho’s cheaper Benfica release clause lapse on May 29, pushing his exit fee toward €15 million before the June 7 vote.

Published

3 days ago

June 3, 2026

Cristian Delgado

Real Madrid’s plan to re-hire Jose Mourinho has turned more expensive. A release clause that let clubs prise the coach away from Benfica for about €6 million (roughly $6.5 million) lapsed on May 29, and according to The Athletic the compensation Madrid must now pay could climb to as much as €15 million. ESPN put the early-window figure a little higher, nearer €7 million.

What pushed the cost up happened off the pitch. Florentino Perez called a club presidential election he did not have to call, and the administrative freeze around that vote ran the clock past the cheaper window. The same ballot, scheduled for June 7, could still decide whether Mourinho coaches in Madrid at all.

How a €6m Window Slipped Into a €15m Bill

Mourinho’s Benfica contract carried a buyout mechanism rather than an open negotiation. For ten working days after the Portuguese season ended, any interested club could sign him for the lower fixed fee. Madrid moved inside that window, agreeing terms with the coach in the week after May 16. The formal paperwork did not follow.

Once the ten days ran out on May 29, the fixed price went with them. Benfica are no longer bound to accept the cheap number; they can hold out for a negotiated package, and the figure being reported has roughly doubled. The delay added a sum close to what a mid-tier first-team signing costs, and it bought Madrid nothing extra on the touchline.

The sequence is short and it is all dated:

Week of May 16: Real Madrid and Mourinho agree personal terms on a three-year deal.
May 23: entrepreneur Enrique Riquelme enters the presidential race, forcing a contested vote.
May 29: the ten-working-day buyout window closes; the fixed fee expires.
June 7: Real Madrid members go to the polls.

Real Madrid Mourinho Benfica release clause cost

The Election Perez Called With a Mandate Still Running

Perez did not have to put himself in front of the members. His mandate ran to 2029, and he has held the presidency without interruption since 2009. He called the vote anyway, and at a press conference he described a campaign by people working “in the shadows” to remove him from office.

That decision is the root of the higher bill. When Riquelme declared his candidacy, an automatic re-confirmation of Perez was off the table and the club tipped into its first contested election since 2006. With the result unsettled, the formal steps a sitting board needs to ratify a new head coach were effectively frozen, and they stayed frozen right through the cheap buyout window. The Real Madrid electoral board’s official timetable fixed polling for June 7 at the basketball pavilion of the club’s training city, hours of voting that now sit between Madrid and a clean announcement.

The club keeps functioning around the freeze. Antonio Rudiger has signed a contract extension, and work on Mourinho’s backroom staff and summer targets has carried on behind the scenes after two seasons without a major trophy.

Benfica Cash In on the Wait

The party that gained from the hold-up is in Lisbon. Benfica now negotiate from strength, and they have moved on too, with Marco Silva identified as the man to take over. Mourinho leaves behind a season that reads like a riddle.

Not losing is not enough.

That was Anatoliy Trubin, Benfica’s goalkeeper, refusing to celebrate an undefeated league campaign that still ended without the title. The numbers behind his line:

80 points and a third-place finish in the Primeira Liga.
34 games unbeaten, 23 wins and 11 draws, the draws fatal in the title race.
Eight points behind champions Porto, two behind Sporting.
Europa League football next term, not the Champions League he reached this season.

Europe told the other half of the story. Mourinho’s Benfica recovered from four straight defeats to reach the knockout phase, and on the way they beat Real Madrid 4-2 in Lisbon, knocking the Spanish side out of the top eight. The club he humbled in January is the one now paying to take him.

A Bernabeu Reunion 13 Years After the First Goodbye

Mourinho ran Real Madrid from 2010 to 2013, winning La Liga in 2011-12 with a record points haul before leaving for Chelsea amid open friction in the dressing room. Thirteen years on, the club courting him looks very different. The Galactico calm of recent years has cracked.

Xabi Alonso, hired with much fanfare, was sacked in January, and the job has since passed to Alvaro Arbeloa on an interim basis. Alonso did not wait long for his next move, taking on an early test at Chelsea built around the squad he wants. The vacancy he left is the one Perez wants Mourinho, now 63, to fill.

The pitch from the president is continuity of ambition after a trophyless run. The pitch from Mourinho is the version of himself that beat Madrid twice over two legs and dragged a flawed Benfica into Europe’s last 16. Madrid are buying the coach who reached the knockouts, and paying a premium for the privilege of doing it late.

Why Mourinho Won’t Board a Plane Yet

The coach is in no rush to land in Madrid. People close to him say he values working somewhere he feels wanted, and he is reluctant to fly in while the board that would employ him is still undecided. He has turned down lucrative Saudi Pro League offers this year to stay in European football, so the destination matters to him as much as the fee.

While he waits, the rebuild around him is taking shape on paper. Rudiger’s renewal locks down the defence, and the recruitment team is mapping targets, including a right-back search opened up by the wider transfer market. None of it goes public until the man who would oversee it knows who his president is.

What Does the June 7 Vote Decide?

The ballot is straight, and the two names on it want opposite things from the bench. Perez has staked his next project on Mourinho. Riquelme, a 37-year-old businessman making his first run, has said the Portuguese was never his choice and has reportedly already agreed terms with a different coach.

Position	Florentino Perez	Enrique Riquelme
On Mourinho	Wants him as the centrepiece of his next project	Says he was never his pick; has another coach lined up
Vision	Continuity of the current model	A “long-term project”; called the Alonso sacking a mistake
Members	Status quo on fees and access	Cut membership fees by half, 10,000 season seats by lottery
Standing	President since 2009, mandate to 2029	First candidacy, validated by the board

The stakes for the coaching deal are spelled out in the candidates’ own positions, set down beside the contest rules in the electoral board’s published minutes. A Riquelme win would leave Mourinho signed by one administration and unwanted by the next, the kind of footing the coach has already said he will not accept.

Real Madrid’s members vote on June 7. Mourinho’s contract is signed and sitting in a drawer; the result of that ballot decides whether it is ever read out.