Chelsea have hired Xabi Alonso as their new manager this summer after cycling through two more managers in their endless hamster wheel last season, with Enzo Maresca swiftly joining another Premier League Big Six club in Manchester City. Alonso himself lost a high profile job a year ago, getting canned by Real Madrid just a few months into his reign.
The circumstances around Alonso's firing were highly publicized and scrutinized by Real Madrid fans, with many feeling Alonso was the victim of "Player Power" and a group of superstars that did not want to change their ways or listen to the manager. From Florentino Perez and the club's perspective, Alonso was not the right fit for the club, disunified the locker room, showed poor leadership, and put his own coaching values over the values of the club.
Already, Alonso is finding a more peaceful environment at Stamford Bridge, which, unfortunately, says a lot about the drama and dysfunction behind the scenes at Real Madrid that seemingly only titans of the game like Zinedine Zidane and Carlo Ancelotti can successfully navigate.
Chelsea have taken in Xabi Alonso more warmly
Chelsea's biggest star right now is attacking midfielder Cole Palmer, who had a disappointing 2025/26 season after getting Ballon d'Or love the previous two campaigns, clearly cutting a frustrated figure, particularly under Liam Rosenior.
But the star playmaker is loving the chance to work with one of the great midfielders of the 2000s and 2010s - a coach who went undefeated in the Bundesliga with Florian Wirtz as his center piece Palmer said of working with Xabi Alonso, via Fabrizio Romano, “Xabi Alonso has been a breath of fresh air for us as players. We are very happy, we like his ideas”.
Chelsea's last mildly successful coach was Mauricio Pochettino, the genius who once led Tottenham Hotspur to the Champions League Final, but Alonso could be an entirely different level. He has a chip on his shoulder after the way he was treated at Real Madrid, and he will want to prove his historic 2023/24 season at Bayer Leverkusen was no fluke.
Cole Palmer, in praising Alonso already and using "we" to describe how the Chelsea players feel about his tactical ideas, is taking a bit of a dig at the Real Madrid superstars. Jude Bellingham, Fede Valverde, Vinicius Junior, and quite a few others did not embrace Alonso, and even Kylian Mbappe, who was allegedly a supporter of the coach's, visibly had discontent with the coach on the pitch. It's clear to Alonso's supporters in Madrid that he was not given a fair shake and that he will be more appreciated in London.
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