The Xabi Alonso Era Begins

Once the league concluded and with three weeks to go before the Club World Cup kicks off, although Real Madrid won't debut in the new competition until June 18, the club finally made Xabi Alonso's signing official. Real Madrid embarks on a new era with the appointment of the Basque coach, who replaces the most decorated manager in the club's history, with the essential challenge for Xabi Alonso to lead the team to their sixteenth European Cup, in addition to reclaiming the league title.

Xabi Alonso has signed a three-year contract with the club he played for between 2009 and 2014, when he won the European championship in white, nine years after achieving it with Liverpool. Now, at 43, he returns home to manage Real Madrid after succeeding in Germany. At Bayer Leverkusen, he has proven ready for such a challenge, with the Real Madrid bench always under pressure due to the demand to win all titles immediately.

When Madrid ended their last trophyless season in 2021 with Zinedine Zidane at the helm, Florentino Pérez brought back Carlo Ancelotti, and the following year the club won four out of five possible titles. All except the Copa del Rey. They claimed the Spanish Super Cup, European Super Cup, La Liga, and Champions League in 2022. They also won the 2022 Club World Cup, although it was played in February 2023, after the World Cup in Qatar.

Xabi Alonso will debut on the Madrid bench in the novel and expanded Club World Cup, to be held in the United States from June 14 to July 13, closing the 2024-2025 season. The Basque coach will make his debut after completing a successful three-season stint at Leverkusen, with a historic treble in the 2023-2024 season, where he didn't lose a single match until facing Atalanta in the Europa League final (0-3).

In his second year with the German team, Xabi Alonso won the Bundesliga, the German Cup, and the German Super Cup, and in the last season, he qualified the "aspirin" team for the Champions League, only surpassed domestically by Bayern Munich, the last team he played for. As a coach, Xabi Alonso will face his seventh season this year, after starting with Real Madrid's youth team, having promoted Real Sociedad's reserve team to the Second Division. Only four years have passed since he managed Sanse in the Second B division before making the leap to Real Madrid, one of the two teams of his life, along with Real Sociedad.

At the Chamartín club, he will earn between seven and nine million euros net per season, while Ancelotti earned 11 annually. Madrid also had to pay at least eight million euros to Leverkusen to break the contract with the German club, which was due to end in 2026. Xabi Alonso returns to the white club eleven years after the Champions League final in Lisbon against Atlético, which he couldn't play due to injury, with the aim of proclaiming the team European champions again after this season's failure, where Madrid stumbled despite Kylian Mbappé, only managing to win two minor titles, the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.

Madrid has paid for its poor sports planning, and Xabi Alonso is tasked with revitalizing a complacent team against the hunger and talent of Barça. So far, they have secured two reinforcements for the defense, which has been heavily criticized this season: center-back Huijsen and right-back Alexander-Arnold. The Basque coach has been the main supporter of the young Spanish international, who is the most expensive center-back in Real Madrid's history (60 million), and has also requested the return of youth academy player Álvaro Carreras for the left-back position and a midfielder to replace Toni Kroos and emulate what he offered as a midfielder in the teams he played for and with the Spanish national team, with which he became world champion and twice European champion.

The question will be how Xabi Alonso manages a dressing room full of stars, aside from dealing with Florentino Pérez in such a presidential club. Fernando Morientes, who played with him for two seasons at Liverpool, highlights that the new Real Madrid coach "has a great resume as a footballer, which generates great respect among the players." "He perfectly conveys the values that Real Madrid has had in its coaches. Ancelotti, Zidane, and Del Bosque were good coaches with a diplomatic approach. They have the ability to manage egos in the dressing room, and that is very important," recalls the former Extremaduran striker, referring to an "exceptional person in the human sense, serious, responsible, and hardworking."