Sami Khedira is expected to join Jose Mourinho’s coaching staff at Real Madrid, a high-profile return to the club where he spent the middle years of his playing career and first worked under Mourinho between 2010 and 2013.
The move, announced as expected on the same day Mourinho was named Real Madrid’s head coach on Thursday, would be Khedira’s first senior coaching position since he retired from playing in 2021. Khedira’s résumé at the Bernabeu is substantial: he made 161 appearances for Real Madrid, was part of the 2012–13 La Liga title side that set a record points total under Mourinho, collected the 2014 Champions League medal and won the Copa del Rey on two occasions.
Those honours sit alongside an international career of 77 caps and a 2014 World Cup winner’s medal for Germany, credentials that underline why a return to the club is newsworthy now. Madrid’s conversations with Mourinho and his representatives included plans for him to bring several members of his trusted coaching staff to the Bernabeu, and Khedira is listed among the coach’s expected arrivals alongside Joao Tralhao, Pedro Machado, Roberto Merella, Antonio Dias and Nuno Santos.
For Khedira personally the assignment represents a shift in professional posture: from decorated midfielder to senior member of a coaching team. He first joined Real Madrid from Stuttgart in 2010, worked with Mourinho during the manager’s first spell at the club from 2010 to 2013, then departed the Bernabeu for Juventus in 2015 before eventually retiring in 2021. The anticipated appointment would close a familiar loop — player reunited with the coach who oversaw some of his biggest club achievements.
The personnel list arriving with Mourinho helps explain the speed of the move. The coach’s circle is extensive and consistent: Madrid’s talks explicitly involved plans for Mourinho to import several trusted staff members to the Bernabeu. Naming Khedira signals a blend of Mourinho’s longstanding inner circle and a nod to figures who have direct playing experience at the club and on the international stage.
Not every former player considered for the role will be moving into the dugout. Pepe had also been under consideration for a coaching role at the Bernabeu, a fact that adds friction to the staffing story and underlines that the club’s choices were selective as they rebuilt Mourinho’s backroom team. That competition for places helps explain why Khedira’s expected appointment carries extra weight: it was not an automatic selection of any ex-player with a Madrid past.
The facts on paper are straightforward, but the unanswered details are immediate. The announcement that Khedira is expected to join came on the same day Mourinho was unveiled; it does not specify when a contract will be signed, what formal title Khedira would hold, or what his day-to-day responsibilities in the coaching structure will be. Those are material questions for a club that has appointed former players to coaching roles before, including high-profile examples in recent years.
What happens next is practical and consequential: Real Madrid must confirm appointments and define the new staff’s reporting lines, and Khedira must move from a celebrated playing CV into a functioning coaching role. The single most consequential unanswered question is when the club will formalise the appointments and spell out exactly what Khedira will be asked to do at the Bernabeu — a detail that will determine whether this is a symbolic reunion or the start of a durable coaching partnership with Mourinho.
