Real Madrid lead Barcelona by five points in La Liga, having won 10 of their 11 matches so far. In the Champions League, they have three victories from three before Tuesday’s trip to Liverpool.
It’s been an impressive start for coach Xabi Alonso — who was appointed as Carlo Ancelotti’s replacement at the end of last season.
Yet over the past week, The Athletic has reported on tensions between the 43-year-old and some of his squad — with several first-team players unhappy with his style of management.
The complaints from some Madrid squad members came as something of a surprise, given how Alonso’s close and positive relationships with players led to outstanding successes in previous senior roles with Real Sociedad B and Bayer Leverkusen.
After retiring as a player at Bayern Munich at the age of 35 in 2017, Alonso’s first steps in coaching came during the 2018-19 season, when his Under-14 Real Madrid team went unbeaten as they won regional league and cup titles.
In the summer of 2019, he took over Real Sociedad’s reserve side in Spain’s regionalised third tier, finishing fifth in their league, just outside of the play-off spots, in his debut season. The following campaign they were promoted to the second division — but they immediately came back down.
That squad of mostly local Basque youngsters all had huge respect, if not awe, for Alonso, who came through at Real Sociedad himself in 2000, before going on to win Champions League titles at Liverpool and Real Madrid, and a World Cup and two European Championships with Spain.
“There is nobody better than (Alonso) to convince these players, not just what it means to play well, but to be part of our model,” former Real Sociedad sporting director Roberto Olabe, now at Aston Villa, told The Athletic in November 2021.
Alonso’s charges over three years with Real Sociedad’s reserves included future first-teamers Ander Barrenetxea, Benat Turrientes and Martin Zubimendi, who is now with Arsenal and a regular in Spain’s midfield.
“We had a pretty strong relationship,” Zubimendi told El Pais in 2023. “He came in with a very clear idea which suited me a lot, I learned so much from him. He spent more time with me than others, because he wanted someone in that position who could do the things he liked to do.”
Next, Alonso moved to Leverkusen in October 2022. He came into a squad where spirits and confidence were low, with the team second-bottom in the Bundesliga, but quickly reorganised and revitalised the team as they finished sixth and qualified for Europe.
The following season, they pulled off the tremendous achievement of overcoming Bayern Munich’s 12-year monopoly to win the Bundesliga title. They also won the German Cup and reached the Europa League final but lost to Atalanta — their only defeat in 53 games over a remarkable 2023-24. It was clear that Alonso built a strong relationship with his players.
Xabi Alonso and his Leverkusen players celebrating the Bundesliga title in 2024 (Mika Volkmann/Getty Images)
“What I care about in a manager, and all the managers I’ve had, is how they are, how they treat people,” Lukas Hradecky, Bayer Leverkusen and Finland goalkeeper, told the Bundesliga website in April 2024.
“Xabi is phenomenal in that sense — he brings the right mentality day-to-day, and how he treats the players that aren’t playing that much, as well as the ones that are; he takes them as they are.”
Such a close relationship with his players did not mean that Alonso was not strict about what he wanted from them, however, as Leverkusen left-back Alex Grimaldo told The Athletic in March that year.
“Xabi is very demanding, but with respect,” Grimaldo said. “If you misplace a pass at training, he says: ‘Come on, come on, you can’t make that mistake’. That motivates you and I love it. I have experience and I’m relaxed about (being corrected). I like to see how he also encourages the younger players. I’d have loved to have a coach like him when I was 20 years old.”
When Alonso arrived at Madrid in May this year, there was a lot of interest in whether he would be able to transfer the methods that served him so well in his past jobs, given the different challenges involved when dealing with a dressing room full of superstar talents and egos.
In his first six months in the job, Alonso has looked to implement a lot of what worked for him previously. Training sessions now feature a lot of thorough tactical work, both individual and collective. Players are given detailed videos to study what is expected of them during games.
In response to a feeling that standards had dropped towards the end of Ancelotti’s four years in charge, the new boss has also imposed further sharpness and discipline around training — including players having to drop for press-ups if they did not react quickly enough during drills during the Club World Cup.
Speaking to The Athletic in July, a source close to a squad member wondered whether such intensity and specific instruction would be “sustainable” over the long term, and whether established players would have the “humility” to accept Alonso’s ideas.
The evidence has been mixed so far. Vinicius Junior is among the players to feel that Alonso does not show him the respect he feels his career achievements merit — with the Brazilian very publicly displaying disappointment at being substituted in the recent Clasico against Barcelona, and then pointedly excluding his coach from an otherwise wide-ranging apology.
Another to show discomfort at Alonso’s management is Federico Valverde, who has spoken publicly about his frustrations at not being able to show his best form in the team’s new midfield setup, and his dissatisfaction at playing right-back, where Alonso has been using him because of injuries to Dani Carvajal and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Others in the dressing room are enjoying Alonso’s regime much more — with Kylian Mbappe, Arda Guler, Aurelien Tchouameni, Eder Militao and Alvaro Carreras among those thriving under his management.
Alonso and Mbappe after a Madrid win at Levante in September (Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
During his 18-year career, Alonso played under many of the top managers of the past two decades — including Ancelotti, Vicente del Bosque, Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez — who all had different ways of working.
At his Bernabeu presentation in late May, Alonso paid tribute to Ancelotti’s influence on the squad he was inheriting. He also said he had learned a lot from all his past coaches but added: “You need to have your own ideas and your own personality.”
Following the situation closely is ex-Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher, who told The Athletic that it looks like his former Anfield team-mate Alonso is closer to Guardiola and Mourinho than Ancelotti or Del Bosque.
“Real Madrid fascinate me,” Carragher said. “They have had problems with managers who have tried to come in and say, ‘This is what I want to do’. It looks like Xabi is that type of manager, it’s his personality. It’ll be really interesting to see if his way can work.
“The greatest success they have had has been with managers like Ancelotti and Del Bosque, who are not seen as stuck to a certain system or formation or philosophy. They are seen as getting the best players on the pitch, keeping them happy, letting them do their stuff and police themselves. They’re different to a Pep (Guardiola) or a Jose (Mourinho), who have their way, and they get the players to fit into that.”
During his time as a player at Liverpool, Alonso and then-manager Benitez did not have the warmest relationship, leading to his transfer to Real Madrid in 2009, a situation which Carragher now says was “daft” and could have been resolved better by both parties.
Benitez is among those coaches who look to control many details, an approach that did not work out well for him in a six-month spell at Madrid that ended in January 2016.
Asked by The Athletic whether Alonso the player liked to be told what to do out on the pitch, Carragher reflected that most managers at most clubs want to monitor their players closely, but then Madrid are not most clubs.
“Xabi was not a player who needed the manager to tell him what to do,” Carragher said. “But he did like the team to have structure and organisation, on and off the pitch, and he felt that was the best way to get the best out of any football team.
“That would be the case with most people in football. From the outside, Real Madrid is a little bit different on that score.”