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Senior Writer- Mark Ogden is a senior soccer writer for ESPN.com. Read his archive here and follow him on Twitter: @MarkOgden_.
Chelsea have appointed former Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid manager Xabi Alonso on a four-year contract that starts on July 1, 2026. But the ex-Real Sociedad, Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Madrid midfielder only lasted for 233 days in his role at the Bernabéu, so are the Blues taking a chance?
ESPN's Mark Ogden and Alex Kirkland explore what went wrong in Madrid, why Chelsea moved for Alonso after sacking Liam Rosenior last month, and what he can bring to the Premier League.
Issues at Real Madrid
Clashes with players
If you had to pick one, overriding factor to explain Alonso's failure at the Bernabéu, it would be the way his relationship deteriorated with key players during his seven months in charge. ESPN reported in January that Vinícius Júnior, Jude Bellingham and Federico Valverde were three star players who hadn't bought into Alonso's methods.
Vinicius' relationship with Alonso started to suffer just weeks into his reign, and the player and his camp were soon convinced that the new head coach wasn't a fan when he toyed with playing the left winger in an unfamiliar right-wing position, and planned to drop him for Madrid's Club World Cup semifinal with Paris Saint-Germain before an injury-enforced reshuffle saw him back in the XI.
When the LaLiga season started, Alonso left Vinícius out of the team several times despite being fully fit. The situation exploded, publicly, when Alonso substituted him during October's Clásico with Barcelona, and Vinicius reacted angrily, shouting 'I'll leave, shall I?' as he stormed off the pitch and down the tunnel. That relationship never recovered, with sources close to the player telling ESPN that Alonso was a major roadblock to Vinicius renewing his contract, which expires in 2027.
Like Vinicius, central midfielder Valverde was unhappy at what he viewed as being played out of position. "I wasn't born to play right back," he told the media during a Champions League trip to Kairat Almaty, when he was also seen warming up on the touchline with little apparent enthusiasm, when left out.
Alonso also had a vision for midfielder Bellingham, which contrasted with the freedom of movement he had previously enjoyed. "I want [Bellingham] to be as efficient as possible" Alonso said last summer. "Jude has the capacity to cover a lot of ground, but he has to start in the right place."
In January, Bellingham dismissed reports of unrest behind the scenes as "fabricated or exaggerated." But then Alonso was fired four days later.
Doubts from club executives
Alonso's handling of Madrid's stars only added to doubts at executive level over whether he was the right man for the job in the first place. ESPN reported that president Florentino Pérez had been concerned about a lack of experience, but Alonso had been championed by Madrid's director general, José Ángel Sánchez, whose recommendation Pérez accepted.
Alonso was aware of those doubts, and so were the players. It meant that he was handicapped from the start, and any problems along the way only added to the uncertainty.
When crises did blow up -- such as Vinicius' substitution in the Clásico -- Alonso didn't receive the club's unequivocal backing. Instead, his decision-making was questioned, with behind-the-scenes suggestions that the coach was at least partly to blame. Some club executives had been dubious about Alonso's management of Vinicius from the start, while there were also concerns about the team's fitness and injury record. As Madrid's season went off the rails in December, a source told ESPN that Alonso, under pressure to turn things around, had appeared negative and subdued at Madrid's Valdebebas training ground.
When Alonso was eventually fired in January, there was regret from some senior figures at Madrid that the decision to part ways had not come sooner, rather than allowing an unsustainable situation to drag on.
ESPN Brasil's Gustavo Hofman talks about the reasons behind Vinícius Júnior's outburst and strained relationship with Xabi Alonso after El Clasico.
Big-game disappointments
By January, Madrid had already suffered some significant losses, further undermining confidence in the project. The first came in the summer when Madrid were thrashed 4-0 by PSG in the Club World Cup semifinals at MetLife Stadium, in Alonso's first test against elite opposition.
Alonso had been reluctant to take over before the Club World Cup, believing it would be preferable to start afterwards, but circumstances -- with former Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti leaving for the Brazil job -- meant he was obliged to. It made for a rushed introduction, and a disrupted pre-season calendar.
"I think the origin is in the Club World Cup," Pérez said in a TV interview this week, when asked to explain Madrid's poor season. "We didn't have a pre-season. We had injuries ... We thought with a change [removing Alonso] we could fix it."
Although Madrid's form in early 2025-26 was good -- they won 13 of their first 14 games -- their next major test brought another crushing defeat: 5-2 at Atletico Madrid. "It was a bad game," Alonso admitted afterwards. "We didn't play well, with or without the ball ... We know we're in a 'construction phase.' But there are no excuses."
Despite it being Madrid's first loss of the season, it was a result that shook faith in Alonso. Then came two defeats in the Champions League, to Liverpool and Manchester City, as part of a run of just two wins in eight matches. It was around the City game, which came three days after a LaLiga loss to Celta Vigo in December, that the club first started giving serious thought to firing him.
There isn't much patience at Madrid; and by then, confidence in the coach, his methods and his suitability for the job was already running out.
Were there any positives?
It would be unfair and inaccurate to dismiss Alonso's brief time at Madrid as an absolute failure. There were signs, at the Club World Cup and in the first two months of the LaLiga season, of a team with fresh ideas and a new, more cohesive, collective identity. The football wasn't sparkling, but it was often effective.
The high point was, unquestionably, Madrid's 2-1 win over Barcelona in El Clásico on Oct. 26. Barça had won all four Clásicos in 2024-25, by some big margins (like 4-0 at the Bernabéu.) In that context, the October win was psychologically important in restoring a feeling of parity between the two teams. Unfortunately for Alonso, it also contained Vinicius' act of on-field rebellion which, in many ways, was the beginning of the end.
Part of Alonso's failure at Madrid can be ascribed to the club's own idiosyncrasies, its dressing room full of stars used to Ancelotti's hands-off approach, and Pérez's restless impatience. "I once fired three coaches in a season," the president said this week when asked about Alonso. "It isn't the first time it's happened."
However, there are also legitimate questions to be asked about Alonso's inability to adapt an approach which had proved effective at Bayer Leverkusen to a very different environment. -- Alex Kirkland
Arne Slot laughs off a question about whether he has spoken to Xabi Alonso since he was sacked by Real Madrid.
What to expect at Chelsea
Why Alonso and why now?
Let's rewind 12 months to when Alonso announced he was leaving Bayer Leverkusen. At the time, the 44-year-old was one of the hottest young coaches around and Real Madrid believed they were hiring Europe's next A-lister -- a man with blue-chip credentials as a World Cup and Champions League-winning player, and a coach who ended Bayern Munich's domestic dominance by guiding Leverkusen to a league (unbeaten) and cup double in 2023-24.
As Alex explains above, there can be no escaping the huge dent to Alonso's reputation that came with six turbulent months at Real Madrid, but Chelsea still believe they are hiring somebody who remains one of the best young coaches in the game.
Chelsea's owners and sporting directors had a shortlist including Bournemouth's Andoni Iraola, Fulham's Marco Silva and Alonso as they embarked on the search for a successor to Rosenior, who was fired after just 106 days in charge after taking the job from their French partner club Strasbourg.
Sources have told ESPN that the Rosenior hire has been viewed as a mistake and a learning curve by the Chelsea hierarchy, and that the key lesson from it was that the squad needed an experienced, proven coach to take it forward and ensure the players realise their potential.
Chelsea have had a mixed approach to coaching hires since the BlueCo / Clearlake Capital takeover in May 2022. Thomas Tuchel, appointed by the previous regime, was fired just weeks into the 2022-23 season and replaced by Brighton's Graham Potter, but Potter was then dismissed just seven months into a five-year contract. Chelsea legend Frank Lampard returned for a second spell as coach on an interim basis, before Mauricio Pochettino was hired after leaving Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2023; yet within a year, the current USMNT coach left due to disagreements over recruitment.
Enzo Maresca was then hired in May 2024 after guiding Leicester to promotion from the EFL Championship in his first full season as a coach, but despite winning the UEFA Conference League and FIFA Club World Cup, the Italian was fired in January 2026 after, like Pochettino, questioning recruitment.
Rosenior, promoted from his role at Strasbourg because the club wanted continuity in their multi-club model, was another inexperienced recruit who was expected to guide the young squad. But having seen the team fail so badly under the 41-year-old, Chelsea have now realised that experience and pedigree counts.
Alonso is still short on experience, at 44, but the Blues needed to move quickly to head off the potential scenario of Liverpool landing their former midfielder in the event of Arne Slot losing his job at Anfield. And the club believe they have landed a top-class coach in time for him to help influence summer transfer ins and outs ... which is a big part of the reason others have left.
What assurances has Alonso asked for / been given?
Sources have told ESPN that Alonso wants Chelsea to finesse their recruitment model by signing more readymade players rather than focusing solely on emerging talent, which they have spent over £2 billion doing for little reward over recent years.
Sources said that Chelsea now understand the importance of adding more senior players to a talented, but young and largely unproven squad, while Alonso also expects his voice to carry more weight than those of his predecessors when it comes to team management and development.
The club's refusal to alter its recruitment blueprint was an issue that frustrated both Pochettino and Maresca, but sources said that Alonso has taken charge after being told that recruitment will evolve. Having worked within a structure at Leverkusen that included sporting and technical directors, sources added that Alonso is familiar with the Chelsea model and comfortable with their approach (the Blues have five sporting directors, including Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart), but that it needs the tweaks that he wants to implemented.
While the Chelsea structure will continue to involve the input of sporting directors, data analysts and the club's medical department, Alonso will have more control than any of his predecessors during the BlueCo era.
How will he play? Three at the back or 4-3-3?
Alonso's success at Leverkusen was rooted in his 3-4-3 formation and he has the players to take a similar route at Chelsea, although Ruben Amorim's failure to implement a similar system at Manchester United showed how it can unravel quickly in the Premier League.
The key to the system is the wing backs, with Jeremie Frimpong (now at Liverpool) and Alex Grimaldo both playing significant roles for Alonso at Leverkusen. Malo Gusto and Marc Cucurella both have the qualities to play as wing backs under Alonso at Chelsea, while Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo would have no issues playing as the two deep-lying midfielders with Cole Palmer potentially playing the Florian Wirtz role as a No. 10 behind the striker.
But after moving to Madrid, Alonso moved to a 4-2-3-1 system, which has often been deployed by Chelsea in recent seasons.
Whichever system he chooses to play, Alonso has the personnel to be flexible, but his squad depth could dictate which way he goes on a regular basis.
Does Alonso's hiring mean Chelsea's big players will stay?
Chelsea are ninth in the table with 49 points, but go into the final week of the season with an outside chance of qualification for European football next season -- they could even claim a highly unlikely Champions League spot with a sixth-place finish if fourth-placed Aston Villa win the Europa League and Bournemouth (sixth, 55), Brighton (seventh, 53), and Brentford (eighth, 51) let things slip in the last two games.
The Blues could yet end up in the Europa League or Conference League, depending on results, but the most realistic scenario is that they miss out on Europe altogether and that will place question marks over leading players including Fernandez, Palmer and João Pedro, who sources have told ESPN is on Barcelona's list of targets to replace striker Robert Lewandowski.
Alonso's appointment is a statement of intent by the Chelsea hierarchy. His reputation as a player and coach is regarded as being a significant factor in helping to convince the club's leading names to stay and will go some way to persuading them that the club mean business in terms of challenging for major honours.
Yet his downfall at Madrid was in no small part down to his failure to manage a squad of big stars and egos; he was never able to create a harmonious dressing room.
Rosenior lost his job at Chelsea for similar reasons -- results and player unrest -- though much of his failure to convince his players was down to the former Hull City manager's lack of top-level pedigree.
Alonso has that in abundance and he is unlikely to face the squad scepticism that ultimately befell Rosenior. When he walks into the training ground, Alonso will get the instant respect and authority that Rosenior was never able to command, so he has a strong chance of keeping the squad together this summer. -- Mark Ogden
