Valverde was taken from Valdebebas to hospital in May after an argument with Tchouaméni that Real Madrid’s internal investigation concluded with a €500,000 fine for each player. The Uruguayan was diagnosed with cranioencephalic trauma and ruled out of the Clasico against Barcelona a few days later.
Speaking to The Bridge, Tchouaméni finally rejected the version in which the two players exchanged blows.
“I never came to blows with Valverde. It’s true that there was a bit of a nasty incident,” he told the programme.
“People talk a lot, but there was no fight between Valverde and me.”
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Arbeloa walked Valverde into the hospital
The clash unfolded over 7 and 8 May 2026, with tempers spilling from the training pitch into the dressing room. Álvaro Arbeloa, interim head coach at the time, accompanied Valverde to the hospital near Valdebebas before Florentino Pérez held a crisis meeting that produced the fines, with no sporting sanction attached.
Valverde had pushed back on the “fistfight” framing from the start, saying he had accidentally hit a table, not his team-mate. The club trailed Barcelona by 11 points at the time and were on course for a second straight season without a major trophy, a backdrop Valverde himself blamed on “the strain of the competition and frustration”.
‘Valverde and I are fine’
Tchouaméni’s account to The Bridge, five months on, is that the fallout has done the opposite of what the headlines suggested.
“Valverde and I are fine, there is no problem between the two of us,” he said in the same interview.
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The France midfielder also pointed to his current head coach for the shift in tone.
“If you walk into the dressing room today, as Mourinho said, you’ll see that Valverde and I are fine.”
Mourinho’s turn with both of them
Jose Mourinho took over for the 2026/27 season and now has both players in a midfield that travels to Barcelona on Sunday six points behind the league leaders. It will be Mourinho’s first Clasico since his 2010-2013 spell at the club, and Tchouaméni and Valverde are both expected to start.
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