The Portuguese international will be out for six months with a knee injury, something that could force Real to bring in a new defender in January.
Valdano told Marca: “We appreciate that we have an opportunity to expand our staff in January in order to make the squad more comfortable, and tomorrow we will discuss this.
“We cannot rule it out but first we will have to look at the market.”
He added: “Pepe is irreplaceable, there is no player like him. We have the assurance that in him we have a world class player and there is no one like him.”
