Aurélien Tchouaméni says there is no problem between him and Federico Valverde after their locker-room altercation at Valdebebas, insisting the story was blown far beyond what actually happened. He said the false accounts that followed made the episode sound more serious than it was, even though Real Madrid had already fined both players €500k each in May after the physical incident.
The reason the feud still draws attention is simple: Valverde needed hospital treatment for a head injury after the incident, and the club’s punishment suggested the matter was serious even if both players later tried to cool it down. Tchouaméni said the most important thing was that everyone was okay and calm in the locker room, while Valverde described the episode as a disagreement and said he suffered a small cut after slipping and hitting his head on a table.
That version matters because it sits at the center of a messy contradiction. Valverde denied that punches had been thrown, and Tchouaméni said the false stories made the incident look worse than it was. But the club’s response — a fine of €500k each after a physical incident at Valdebebas — left little doubt that the argument had crossed a line inside Real Madrid’s dressing room. The timing also sharpened the fallout, because it came shortly before the Clásico defeat that confirmed Barcelona’s La Liga title win.
The wider backdrop is a season Real Madrid would rather forget. The club failed to win a single trophy, and the incident was widely seen as the low point in that collapse. Xabi Alonso was later sacked less than six months after being appointed, underlining how quickly the mood turned from expectation to damage control. Tchouaméni’s message now is that the heat has passed, but the unanswered part is not whether the two players can move on — it is how a locker-room disagreement ended with fines, hospital treatment and a story that, for two or three days, seemed to swallow the club whole.
