The Details Of Xabi Alonso’s Departure From Real Madrid: Not All Is What It Seems

These observations — where I look at Real Madrid’s history, its players on loan, Castilla, tactical tidbits, and other relevant thoughts — are now a regular thing. All previous editions can be found here.

IN JULY OF 2000, a freshly-elected Florentino Perez ushered in his improbable rise to Real Madrid presidency by signing the world’s best player, Luis Figo. The signing — well documented and unnecessary to revisit in its entirety now — was atomic.

Perez also needed to clear room in the squad, and, as a brute consequence of that, sold one of the darlings of Lorenzo Sanz (the previous president), Fernando Redondo. Redondo, who needs no introduction, was far beyond just a random squad player or mere Sanz-favourite — he was a bonafide legend and the greatest defensive midfielder in club history.

There were no scenarios where Redondo saw himself leaving. Then coach Vicente del Bosque dismissed any notion.

“There are always rumours during the summer but I am in no doubt that my relationship with Redondo is going to continue,” del Bosque told reporters. “Nobody is irreplaceable, but I will always have Fernando. The player is smiling, he seems very content and he is working very well. He is a great professional.”

Nevertheless, without the consent of neither the coach nor player, Redondo was sold, and the wording of it from the Club was as such:

“Real Madrid would like to officially announce the agreement reached today between Fernando Redondo and AC Milan. This transfer has come about as a result of the expressed desire of the player and Real Madrid will receive £11.25 million.”

Redondo, unbeknownst to the deal, refuted the club’s statement in a press conference.

“I refuse to allow this stain on my name and my image,” Redondo said. “I want to give you the facts. The only details I knew about this transfer I read in the newspapers. Nobody from Real Madrid contacted me to tell me what was happening until Wednesday night.

“Then I was told that Milan’s offer was very interesting for the club and a fee had been agreed. I was told that this information had already been passed to my agent. I phoned him and he confirmed that he had spoken to Milan and that the deal was agreed.

“I understood the situation but it was not my decision to leave. The club wanted me to go and I was in an impossible situation.

“It really hurts that Real have tried to confuse the fans by claiming it was my “expressed desire” to leave. That is not true and I refuse to allow my honour to be put in doubt. This has been done to stain my name and my image.”

LITTLE HAS CHANGED in how Real Madrid operate, even if, on the surface, things seem better. Earlier this afternoon, the club announced that Xabi Alonso is leaving Real Madrid, with the following wording:

“Real Madrid C. F. wishes to announce that, by mutual agreement between the club and Xabi Alonso, it has been decided to bring his time as first team coach to an end.”

Multiple media outlets came out and said shortly after that it was Alonso’s decision to step down.

Alonso generally doesn’t talk ill or go against the club. He will bite his tongue and keep peace — but according to reliable sources within the club, Alonso wanted to stay but was sacked — this was not his decision, nor was it ‘mutual’.

It doesn’t matter much now. What’s done is done. The Alonso project was not where it was expected to be by January. The team barely ever looked good on the field — and certainly didn’t look convincing, even in wins, since October. The odd exception (a win over Real Betis) popped up here and there, but even in those victories, the performance wasn’t switched on for the entirety of the 90 minutes.

WATCH / LISTEN: Live Reaction To Xabi Alonso’s Sacking

But there was little backing from the board, and patience was incredibly thin — and the trust had eroded over the months up until the point of today’s decision. The performance in the Clasico was the boiling point, and it didn’t help that Alonso himself didn’t have the full trust of the entire locker room — nor did he have the support of the board. In many ways, he was isolated from all directions.

Real Madrid just didn’t have the appetite to play the long game with Alonso. Belief in a turnaround was marginalized to those without much power to sway Florentino Perez, who questioned Alonso’s decisions on the field. Things became cold and distant. Alonso, once revered as a legend (and still should be), had now suffered a change in perception.

But a lot of the words that Alonso used in his first press conference and presentation as Real Madrid’s head coach — flexible, dynamic, connection with the crowd, ambitious, proactive, take initiative — seem like empty calories now. Words mean very little at Real Madrid. Winning matters more than anything. Alonso had many words, many ideas, but the results didn’t show.

And rarely did we ever get a glimpse of his vision.

But it’s also twisted and somewhat bizarre that we’ve landed here mid-season. If you had predicted this would happen back in October, after a convincing win over Barcelona where the press was starting to come together, you’d be filthy rich. The downfall since then — officially kickstarted in a disastrous showing at Anfield — has been steep and catastrophic. The team free falled, and Alonso’s ideas nosedived with it. Key players with power didn’t buy in to his vision fully.

Alonso eventually realized that managing Real Madrid is different than managing Bayer Leverkusen. It’s not so much about tactics, but about man-management and freedom.

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As Sid Lowe and I discussed on a Managing Madrid Podcast back in December, Alonso has always had class, both as a player and manager, but sometimes he is too ‘above the noise’, almost like a professor, and he needed to get down to the players’ level and get his hands dirty to lead the team. He ‘lacked the warmth’ of Carlo Ancelotti.

By the time he realized these truths, it was too late. He did slowly repair fragmented relationships with certain players around mid-November, but it came at a cost: He let the players take over, and some of the tolerance led to a loss of respect from other players. The biggest example of this was his acceptance of Vinicius’s reaction when subbed off during Clasico; another example was his acceptance of Kylian Mbappe dismissing his request to give Barcelona a guard of honour.

It is one thing to listen to your players, be open-minded to change, and allow freedom — but it’s another to lose face, lose authority, and make decisions out of fear. Alonso fell into the trap of the latter.

Alonso’s in-game management was also questionable. His subs rarely had a positive effect on the game state in the second half. Players were played out of position and the minutes were dispersed in a way that made it hard for players to establish rhythm. Patterns were random. Kylian Mbappe was run into the ground — soaking up each possible minute — as if Alonso was terrified of playing without him. The on-ball play and ball progression was, quite bluntly, disastrous. After Alonso compromised his ideas and played in deeper blocks, the team could never impose its will, nor did they have the proper ball progressers to escape pressure. Thibaut Courtois heroics became a trend again.

IT’S NOT ALL on Xabi Alonso — far from it. Injuries took a massive toll in shaping the team’s demise, and coincided greatly with the defense falling off a cliff. There is nothing Alonso could do but stare on in horror as he lost his two starting right-backs — Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dani Carvajal — as well as his two starting center-backs — Eder Militao, Dean Huijsen — to major injuries. The dominoes of those injuries became clear: A disgruntled Fede Valverde was taken out of midfield by default, and by the time the Clasico rolled around, Aurelien Tchouameni played at center-back, and it was not uncommon for Alvaro Carreras to play there as well.

Of all his signings — Carreras, Franco Mastantuono, Huijsen, Trent — only Carreras has been available to him full time. Mastantuono was prominent early on and was a driving force in the aggressive press, but then suffered from pubalgia and never returned to rhythm. Huijsen’s injuries lingered throughout, and he hasn’t performed well when on the field. Trent has barely played — though his profile clearly helps when he’s healthy. Carreras has been one of the team’s better performers and a huge upgrade to Fran Garcia at left-back.

Alonso also suffered from the same things Ancelotti suffered from, such as: the lack of a deep-lying playmaker in the post Toni Kroos era. Though, Ancelotti did have Modric, and Alonso would’ve made good use of him too.

It is a challenge to build a coherent build-up identity without a natural deep ball progressor, which is further compounded by injuries to ball playing defenders like Trent. Alonso tried playing Arda Güler deeper as a solution, but Arda is better as a 10, where his position conflicts with Jude Bellingham, and the Turk wasn’t ready to make that leap to a Kroos role yet.

Alonso could also do little about the poor finishing of the team. The most recent example was the Super Cup Final against Barcelona, where the team created seven big chances and converted two. In the league, they’ve underperformed their xG by 7+ — one of the worst discrepancies in the league. Goals outside of Mbappe ran dry with Vinicius struggling to find form consistently.

Could the board have waited for things to normalize? Gonzalo has re-inserted himself as a valuable rotation player and Rodrygo has risen. Vinicius looked great in Clasico, and, eventually, Trent, Carvajal, and Militao will come back. Could they have simply waited until the end of the season to see what Alonso can cook when he has the full roster available? Would that have bought him time to sign a midfielder in the summer and keep building for next season?

The board also could have backed Alonso more both internally and externally. Culture is often set from above. When it’s clear that the coach doesn’t have full authority over the intensity of the training sessions, and his decisions on tactics are not absolute — you’ve also indicated that the players are bigger than the greater cause.

Some of these lingering issues, like players taking issue with film sessions, is uncomfortably similar to problems of days gone by, when Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo Nazario politely took Vanderlei Luxemburgo aside and told him his early training sessions and ‘no alcohol’ policy simply won’t fly here, and that he’ll have to change his rules to allow for players to drink and sleep in.

There is also the elephant in the room: Vinicius and Mbappe have now had a 1.5 season sample size that they cannot play together. This, and all the above challenges, will not disappear for Alvaro Arbeloa or any future manager until big decisions are made.

Still, when all is said and done, even with the aforementioned things that Alonso had little-to-no control over — this is not supposed to be a fair gig. Managing Real Madrid is not for the faint of heart. What’s fair or unfair is irrelevant. All that matters here is winning. And Xabi Alonso didn’t do enough of that in these six months.