Fede Valverde opens the door to Rodrygo Real Madrid The third non-EU place will be free for the Brazilian

Real Madrid have five non-EU players in their squad. Eder Militao and Vinicius Junior's places are confirmed, as is Fede Valverde's, but the latter will free up a slot for Rodrygo Goes in the coming days as the Uruguayan is set to receive a Spanish passport.

The club are confident that, at the very latest, it will arrive in time for the beginning of the new LaLiga Santander season, which will Rodrygo to be registered.

Rodrygo's situation isn't the clearest in Madrid. Nobody really knows yet if he'll have a similar season to what Vinicius had last year and make the leap from Castilla, but the option is there should Zidane need to call on him.

Takefusa Kubo would be the player sacrificed, despite his impressive pre-season. Zinedine Zidane and the club still want to ease him into life in the capital.

Vinicius will be blindly relied upon and he'll be given a lot of minutes, but he hasn't yet hit his best form since returning from injury.

Zidane himself confessed that Madrid will need to show something close to what they'll do this season in the final two friendlies against Red Bull Salzburg and Roma. But it's not something that has been seen so far.