MADRID — At 6:30 on a Saturday morning in Gran Canaria, a routine police checkpoint intercepted a Porsche Macan carrying one of Real Madrid’s defenders. The driver was Raúl Asencio. By the time two breathalyser tests had been administered, the reading was 0.90 milligrams of alcohol per litre of breath, nearly four times Spain’s legal limit of 0.25. He did not contest it. Three days later, a court in San Bartolomé de Tirajana finalised the consequences: a €14,400 fine, an eight-month driving ban, and a disciplinary file opened by the club he refused to leave this summer.
Real Madrid confirmed on Tuesday that they have launched an extraordinary disciplinary process against the 22-year-old centre-back following the August 16 incident and the subsequent conviction on August 19. The file represents a formal internal reckoning under the terms of the Asociación de Futbolistas Españoles collective agreement, the Spanish players’ union framework that governs how clubs can sanction their employees. Under those rules, a “serious” infraction carries a suspension of between two and ten working days’ salary, while a classification of “very serious” extends that to between eleven and thirty days, plus a potential deduction of up to 25 percent of monthly gross wages.
Real Madrid have not publicly stated which category they consider the offence to fall into. That determination, and the eventual scale of the financial punishment, is expected in the coming days.
Asencio is already one of the more complicated figures in José Mourinho’s squad planning. He is not among the manager’s top four centre-back options, a calculation that became explicit during the summer transfer window when Mourinho actively sought to move him on. Asencio refused to leave. A subsequent knee injury has since kept him sidelined, and his decision to stay at the Bernabéu despite being surplus to requirements already represented a friction point inside the club. The drink-driving conviction compounds what was already a fraught professional situation.
The timing, too, is notable. The incident occurred in the Canary Islands on the same weekend Asencio would have been expected to maintain professional conditioning standards. August is still pre-season for much of the European football calendar, and even injured players are typically subject to off-field conduct clauses during the club’s preparation period.
The disciplinary file is the latest in a sequence of off-field complications for Asencio. He is already facing a separate, unresolved criminal case involving the alleged recording and distribution of intimate images of a woman and a minor. Both individuals withdrew their complaints, but Spanish prosecutors moved forward independently, in keeping with Spain’s justice system which allows the state to continue a criminal case even when victims choose not to pursue it. That case remains pending.
For Mourinho, the situation creates a management problem without an obvious short-term resolution. Goal noted the accumulation of legal troubles around Asencio, including the earlier criminal case still working its way through the courts.
Asencio has not made a public statement about the conviction. Real Madrid have offered no indication of how long the disciplinary process is expected to take.
The central-defensive depth at the Bernabéu has been substantially reinforced since Mourinho arrived. Real Madrid’s signing of Marc Cucurella from Chelsea for €55 million earlier this window was part of a broader defensive reconfiguration that has, in effect, rendered Asencio a fifth or sixth option in that position, a player the manager would have preferred not to be carrying into the season at all.
Whether the disciplinary process accelerates any further conversation about his future at the club, or simply produces a financial penalty and closes the file, remains to be seen. What is not in doubt is that Asencio has handed Real Madrid grounds for formal action at precisely the moment they had the least appetite for further complications with him.
The eight-month driving ban runs through to April 2027. The disciplinary file’s resolution will come sooner. Whatever Real Madrid decide, the morning of August 16 has already redefined what was already a difficult chapter in the career of one of Spain’s most promising young defenders, a talent whose trajectory has been interrupted, at least in part, by a sequence of decisions made entirely away from the pitch.
Related Posts
