There has been a lot of pining for Xabi Alonso from Real Madrid supporters, who feel that he was some sort of a martyr against a group of unruly players who did not want to listen to his ideas. A narrative exists that players like Fede Valverde, Vinicius Junior, and Jude Bellingham who have always given it their all and won Champions League trophies had it in for Alonso and got him fired when the reality is that Alonso underperformed, didn't actually have ideas that worked at a club like Real Madrid, and got outplayed repeatedly in big games by Arne Slot and Diego Simeone times while barely scraping by the lower level sides.
Some Real Madrid fans have an affinity to a manager who not only won them nothing and proved he was out of his depth after moving from Bayer Leverkusen too soon after a one-hit-wonder season, in which he was credit for a lot of the amazing work that the front office of Leverkusen did in assembling a beautiful squad, but never stood up to defend his players when they were getting slashed to bits by the media. It's almost as if his own ego wanted it to be about the players being a problem and not him. Florentino Perez and Real Madrid saw through it and fired him, implying they were both disappointed with his results and saw him as the disunifying force in a locker room that Carlo Ancelotti held together.
Alonso was once Ancelotti's player, and a lot of Real Madrid fans don't seem to remember the story of how he betrayed Los Blancos out of nowhere 12 years ago. After being a crucial starter in the team that won La Decima, Alonso up and left Real Madrid for their biggest rivals in European football whom they had suffered heartbreak against in Champions League semifinals and clashed with year after year, Bayern Munich.
Xabi Alonso never gave a good reason for leaving Real Madrid
The Spanish international left Real Madrid with no explanation. There is only one public account of his reasoning for leaving, and it is the most disrespectful of reasons. Apparently he wanted to join Bayern Munich to learn from the "secrets" of Pep Guardiola and be coached by a manager who was THE ultimate rival of Real Madrid as an institution in the late 2000s and early 2010s before he mercifully left La Liga for the Bundesliga.
Circumstances around Alonso's unexplained departure from Real Madrid to their European Clasico rivals after they had already won the Champions League were so dubious that rumors have spread for years that he basically fled the Spanish capital after being caught cheating on his wife with a Spanish pop star.
But for many Real Madrid fans at the time, they had another explanation. Xabi Alonso quit because he didn't want to compete with the player Real Madrid signed for a bargain from Bayern Munich and would go on to become a much, much better deep lying playmaker than him, Toni Kroos. Bayern also had an easier path to playing time with stars Javi Martinez and Thiago Alcantara injured.
And Kroos would indeed go on to become a better player and bigger legend but not initially in 2014/15. Alonso leaving Real Madrid cost them the potential for five Champions League titles in a row. That's because Real Madrid lost the Champions League semifinal because Paul Pogba and the Juventus midfield exploited the fact that Kroos was the No. 6 - a role he was not comfortable with - and his lack of experience in that position against an elite team. Alonso would have given Madrid more of a chance in bridging a transition, but he left them high and dry four days before the window ended - many Madrid fans felt it was because his ego got hurt.
In the end, Real Madrid got the better end of the deal, because Casemiro emerged as an elite pure defensive midfielder, allowing Kroos to shift to the left and become the legend that he was. But that was certainly no favor from Alonso. So when you see Madridistas slagging off players who fought tooth and nail for the badge these last five years in favor of a manager who was not ready for Madrid, just remember the story of how Alonso already betrayed this club once. He was a great player and is a great manager, but nobody is a flawless martyr. Alonso has his own flaws, too, and Real Madrid, like the first time around, will ultimately be better off without him unless he learns from these mistakes at his next job.
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