“This is a team, it is a club, and we all go together hand in hand,” Xabi Alonso insisted, protesting perhaps a little too much. “When you’re Real Madrid coach you’re ready,” he added on the morning before Manchester City return to the Santiago Bernabéu for the latest of a very modern classic against one of the many managers who made him.
“I’m looking forward to what’s coming and that starts tomorrow, [an opportunity] to turn round the anger. In our heads, there’s only City. In football, for better or worse, things change quickly.”
Lose and things could change immediately, and for good: this opportunity is an obligation, too.
At the end of Madrid’s desperately poor 2-0 home defeat against Celta on Sunday, Alonso said he had “drawn conclusions”, and he was not alone. Late into the night, crisis talks continued, the club’s hierarchy drawing their own conclusions after a single win in five league games. Their diagnoses were different and while drastic decisions remain on hold, patience is finite, the names of potential replacements already out. “You have to face those situations but my head’s only on the game, things I can control,” Alonso said here.
City will be his 28th game in charge of Madrid and it could be his last at a club where a crisis is never more than a couple of defeats away, where even draws will not do, and there’s always someone else who can coach.
Things have indeed changed fast, even if the roots of the crisis were there from the start. Sold as a systems coach, exactly what they needed after a season of laissez-faire and failure, Alonso was counter-cultural at a players’ club. He came with a consciously collective discourse: it didn’t matter who you were, you were going to run. There would be structure, pressure applied.
When Madrid won the clásico in late October, they moved five points ahead of Barcelona at the top. They had won 12 of 13 competitive games, although the defeat had been heavy: 5-2 at Atlético. It also revealed cracks. Substituted on 72 minutes, Vinícius Júnior marched straight down the tunnel, threatening to walk straight out of the club. In a letter a few days later he apologised to everyone except Alonso. Institutionally, rather than reinforcing the manager, there was silence.
Internally, the conclusion was clear: Alonso shouldn’t have taken Vinícius off. Asked here if he would do that again, Alonso replied: “I don’t know what that question is for. If I see in the moment that I have to take a decision on the pitch, I do.” Tensions had been brought to the surface, a disconnect between coach and some players. Federico Valverde, too, had made his frustrations public. The pieces weren’t fitting as they should. A familiar lament began to slip out about all the instructions, the videos, the long sessions. Who did he think he was, the manager?!
Nine days after the clásico, Madrid were defeated at Anfield, beginning a run of two wins in seven. Able to play direct, they beat Olympiakos and Athletic Bilbao but between those drew at Rayo, Elche and Girona. Belatedly, talks were held to fix fault lines or at least cover cracks, to bring calm. Focus turned on the footballers for the first time.
In Bilbao, where they had been brought together a day early in the Melia hotel, it seemed some compromise had been reached; Alonso accommodating their demands more than they did his. Rapprochement was staged when Vinícius embraced the 44‑year‑old as he departed. Two days off followed. Four days later, though, Celta beat them and so it unravels again.
That it is known that Alonso’s future is in doubt is as significant as the fact it is. If Madrid beat City, that can always be denied, but it is deliberate. Alonso knows that. He also knows, for all that he tried to talk about injuries and injustice, not even truly convincing himself, Madrid were awful against Celta: no identity, no attitude, no structure.
“For sure the coach had a good plan but, in the end we, the players, are the ones on the pitch,” Aurélien Tchouaméni said. “If we lost 2-0 to Celta, there’s a problem that’s on us: it’s not the coach’s fault.”
The Frenchman offered an effective defence here and, it felt, a sincere one. He talked about intensity and responsibility. “We have to do better, with and without the ball, with the commitment of everyone,” Tchouaméni insisted. “We hope we can improve and win more games because what’s happening now can’t happen.”
But the weakest link, the simplest fix, is always the manager, and Alonso’s future, more than the actual football, dominated the buildup to this game. However much the man who is still Madrid’s manager kept trying to bring it back to the match, which he did with almost every response in his pre‑match press conference. The shortest answer he gave might have been the most significant, had he truly believed it. Asked if he felt the whole squad was behind him, Alonso replied in a single word: “Yes.” He then said: “Being Madrid manager is not about changing [the culture]; it is about adapting.
“We know the culture of Real Madrid pretty well; that is why it is the biggest club in the world. You have to adapt, learn a lot, interact with the players. Some days are good, some not so good. We have to face that with energy and positivity, that is the only way to turn things around”.
It was when he was asked if he felt alone, isolated, that Alonso talked of a team, a club, that goes hand in hand, and when attention was turned to the question of support or the lack of it from above, he replied: “Communication [with the hierarchy] is constant, and it comes from confidence, unity and affection.
“We’re all together in this. We’re mentally ready to face everything that comes: the team is united, convinced that we can win tomorrow, no one has any doubts about that. It is the Champions League. We are at the Bernabéu. The atmosphere will be special. That creates a different energy, including in the players.”
