How Alonso ran into the Bernabeu wall: A footballing sophisticate rushed by Real Madrid

In May last year, when the coronation of Xabi Alonso as the new Real Madrid manager was taking place, his friend and former Liverpool teammate Luis Garcia said something which sounds prophetic now. In a podcast, Garcia said: “Xabi is a great coach but he needs players for his system that the Real Madrid board might not agree to give him. It’s going to be difficult for him.”

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To start with, Alonso, superb holding midfielder of fine pedigree during his time, wanted a player of the profile of Martin Zubimendi — a Spaniard whom Alonso had himself nurtured during his Real Sociedad B coaching days. Real, since the departure of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric were sorely lacking control in the midfield — but the board was not ready to shell out the money for Zubimendi. The Spaniard moved to Arsenal and the Gunners are looking the best team in Europe at the moment.




Over the next seven months that Alonso was in charge, the midfield was an area that kept bothering him. But the results weren’t disastrous, Real have seen much worse.

Halfway through the season, they are four points off the top in the Liga and look poised to make the top-8 of Champions League — something they couldn’t manage last year under Carlo Ancelotti.

Barring that 2-5 mauling to Atletico Madrid in the Liga, one-goal defeats against Manchester City, Liverpool and Barcelona are par for the course. And let’s not forget, Alonso did win the first Liga Clasico.

Losing the dressing-room
Even on Sunday in the Super Cup final against Barca, Real were in the game till the last minute. But there was a telling moment after the match which probably indicated that Alonso had lost the dressing-room.

As the much-respected 44-year-old urged his players to give Barcelona players the guard of honour as they took the podium, Kylian Mbappe told his teammates not to do so. And the players ignored their coach and followed the star.

This wasn’t the first time when a coach’s orders were questioned in public. During the Liga Clasico, as Alonso replaced Vinicius Junior with 10 minutes for the final whistle at the Bernabeu, the Brazilian left the ground fuming, straight to the dressing room, without acknowledging his coach. The temperamental winger did apologise on X later, but there was no mention of Alonso, whom he had disrespected. Those who follow Spanish football closely felt that the fact there was no pressure from the Real Madrid board on Vinicius to be more humble in his apology was a clear indication that things were turning against the coach.

Alonso, son of a football coach and greatly influenced by the legendary Pep Guardiola, believes that attackers need to press and contribute in defence, something that the likes of Vinicius refuse to do.

The Spanish tactician, who made Bayer Leverkusen the ‘invincible’ champions of Bundesliga in 2024 from being relegation strugglers, was constantly up against it at Real with the stars calling the shots. Midfield stalwarts Federico Valverde and Jude Bellingham, too, were reportedly not on his side, and Alonso increasingly cut a lonely figure in the dug-out, a sharp contrast to the feisty coach at the Leverkusen touchline and revered by one and all inside the BayArena.

While scrutiny became his constant companion in Madrid, it was manageable till the results came — 13 wins out of the first 14 in all competitions. But the November injuries followed and the inevitable one-month slump, where Madrid lost nine points in five games forgoing the Liga lead to Barca, all hell broke loose.

Impatience of Real Madrid
Just after Alonso had taken over and Real lost the Club World Cup semifinal to PSG 0-4 in July, the victorious Luis Enrique had expressed optimism for his opposite number.

“Xabi is planning a project and it will take time. It can’t happen overnight,” Enrique had said. The biggest problem with anything around Real is that there is no time. That’s probably the reason a successful coach for the 15-time Champions League winners is invariably more a ‘manager of egos’ than a ‘man of ideas’. Their three most successful since 2000 — Vicente Del Bosque, Zinedine Zidane and Ancelotti — didn’t bring anything new to world football, but they did manage superstars well.

What happens now
Alvaro Arbeloa, the new manager at Real Madrid, is a close friend of Alonso’s during his playing days and who too joined the Los Blancos from Liverpool in the same year, 2009. But they are different characters. While Alonso’s feistiness was all on the field, Arbeloa, a successful full-back for club and country, exudes a swaggering cockiness that is a part and parcel of the Real Madrid ethos.

A respected figure in the Real ranks, he has been coaching the Real junior teams since 2020, winning a domestic treble in 2022 with the U19 team for the first time. But coaching Mbappe and Co. is a different ball game and Arbeloa — a favourite of Jose Mourinho during his Real Madrid days — would know that. All-conquering success at Real looks a far cry for now, and if Arbeloa can keep the team competitive till the end of the season, it could earn him a longer rope.

Else, the whispers carrying Juergen Klopp’s name could get louder around the mazy corridors of the swanky Santiago Bernabeu.


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