Huijsen Takes Real Madrid’s No. 4 Shirt – A New Legacy Begins
The list looked routine at first glance. Squad numbers, a summer formality, another document signed off in an office at Valdebebas. Then one detail jumped off the page.
No. 4: Huijsen.
At Real Madrid, some shirts are just fabric and ink. The No. 4 is not one of them. It belongs to the club’s defensive royalty, a lineage that runs from Fernando Hierro to Sergio Ramos and, most recently, David Alaba. Now it rests on the shoulders of a 20-year-old from Malaga whose story is only just beginning.
For Huijsen, who wore 24 last season, this is not a cosmetic upgrade. It is the number he chased as a boy, the digit he associated with his heroes. He grew up in Malaga, the same city that produced Hierro, one of the most commanding captains in Madrid’s history. On social media, he posed with the new shirt and did not bother to hide what it meant.
“It’s always been my dream to play for Real Madrid and wear the number 4,” he wrote, before reeling off the names that shaped his imagination. Sergio Ramos, first and foremost. Ramos the warrior, Ramos the serial winner, Ramos the man whose ‘SR4’ boots Huijsen laced up as a child because he wanted to be just like him. Before Ramos, Hierro. Another legend. Another No. 4. Another son of Malaga.
Those references are not accidental. At Madrid, numbers carry memory. They carry pressure too.
A defining season ahead
The 2026-27 campaign has already been framed inside the club as a decisive one for Huijsen. His debut year in the capital offered glimpses of what he could become: composed on the ball, aggressive in duels, brave enough to play on the front foot in a white shirt that tightens the lungs of many young defenders.
The problem was not talent. It was consistency. His form dipped, minutes slipped away, and with them went his place in Luis de la Fuente’s Spain squad for the World Cup. For a player on Madrid’s books, that kind of setback stings twice – once for country, once for status.
The response came late, but it came. A strong finish to the previous season reminded the coaching staff why the club had invested in him. Now he has something else in his corner: a full pre-season under Jose Mourinho, whose training sessions are as demanding as his standards. If Huijsen wants to be taken seriously as the new No. 4, he is working under a coach who will not let him forget what that entails.
He knows it too. “I know this number has a history filled with legends, and I hope to write my own story so that one day people will consider me worthy of having worn this shirt and this number,” he said. The promise that followed was simple and old-fashioned: total commitment, every day, in training and in matches.
A bridge between eras
The No. 4 at Madrid does not just belong to the distant past. Before it became vacant this summer, it was worn by David Alaba, the versatile Austrian who decided to leave the club after a spell that brought trophies, authority and a quiet kind of leadership.
For Huijsen, Alaba was more than a teammate. He was a guide through the often unforgiving landscape of the Madrid first team. The young defender made a point of acknowledging that debt.
“After that, another great football legend, David Alaba, wore it, and I had the pleasure of sharing a dressing room with him,” Huijsen noted, calling him one of the best teammates and people he has met in the sport. The praise was not about highlight reels or viral moments. It was about work, help, experience, leadership – all the things that shape a dressing room long before the cameras switch on.
That is the line Huijsen now steps onto: from admirer to heir, from the kid in SR4 boots to the man whose own number will be printed on the backs of others.
Weight of the shirt, clarity of the message
If there was any doubt about how seriously he takes the responsibility, his words swept it away. Huijsen thanked the club, the president, the manager, the players and the fans in almost ceremonial fashion. It sounded less like a routine statement and more like someone accepting a role, not just a number.
The symbolism is obvious. Madrid have not handed No. 4 to a veteran stopgap or a fading star. They have given it to a defender still fighting for his place in the national team, still proving he belongs at the very top level. It is a gamble, but it is also a statement of faith.
Now comes the hard part. The history of the shirt will not win a single tackle for him. It will not rescue him if his concentration slips in the 89th minute at a hostile away ground. It will not protect him from scrutiny if results turn.
What it can do is sharpen his focus. When you wear the same number as Hierro and Ramos, you do not hide. You step into the frame.
The squad list is out. The ink is dry. The No. 4 is his.
The question now is whether Huijsen can turn a dream stitched on his back into a career that belongs in the same breath as the legends he grew up watching.
