Marca: Mourinho Watches Real Madrid Castilla Match to Assess Academy Players' Performances

According to Marca, Mourinho watched Real Madrid Castilla's match to assess the performances of the academy players.

During Castilla's match against Torremolinos Youth Team, Mourinho appeared in the stands at the Alfredo Di Stéfano Stadium. The coach did not want to miss Real Madrid's reserve team's first home match of the season and carefully followed the performances of the club's academy players. Real Madrid rested today after losing to Betis yesterday and will resume training tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., but Mourinho still made time to watch the match, which kicked off at 12:00 Beijing time.

In this match, many academy players whom Mourinho had been assessing throughout preseason and who had already entered the first-team rotation received playing opportunities. In fact, four of them were included in the squad list for the previous match against Betis: Javi Navarro, Cestero, Mario Rivas and Sergio Martínez. Cestero and Mario Rivas started, with the midfielder opening the scoring with a spectacular long-range shot from outside the penalty area. Mourinho also followed the performance of defender Nassey, a new signing for Castilla this season; he also watched Yáñez, Joan Martínez and Mestre, other academy players who are also within the first-team radar.