Real Madrid confirms Xabi Alonso is returning

He’s back.

Xabi Alon­so is re­turn­ing to Re­al Madrid to take over a club that failed to meet ex­pec­ta­tions this sea­son.

The Span­ish pow­er­house an­nounced the hir­ing of Alon­so on Sun­day to re­place Car­lo An­celot­ti, who is leav­ing to take over the Brazil job. Alon­so will take over on June 1 and will be giv­en a con­tract through June 2028, the club said.

He’s to be pre­sent­ed as coach on Mon­day.

The 65-year-old An­celot­ti is de­part­ing af­ter four most­ly suc­cess­ful sea­sons with Madrid. He bid a tear­ful farewell on Sat­ur­day in the team’s fi­nal Span­ish league match. An­celot­ti’s con­tract ran to the end of next sea­son, but the club con­firmed his de­par­ture on Fri­day af­ter he had al­ready been an­nounced as the next Brazil coach.

Madrid be­gan the sea­son by win­ning the UE­FA Su­per Cup ti­tle but most­ly strug­gled since then, fail­ing to lift an­oth­er tro­phy and los­ing all four “clási­co” match­es against ri­val Barcelona, which clinched a league and cup dou­ble.

An­celot­ti on Fri­day said he felt Alon­so had the po­ten­tial to suc­ceed at Madrid.

“I don’t want to of­fer ad­vice, be­cause every­one has their own ideas about soc­cer,” he said. “All I can say is that he’s huge­ly for­tu­nate to be Re­al Madrid’s coach. I wish him all the best, and all the luck in the world. I think he has the at­trib­ut­es to coach this team. I hope he en­joys it.”

The club’s of­fi­cial TV chan­nel pre­pared a video with high­lights of Alon­so’s ca­reer, both as a play­er and as a coach, say­ing that “now he has in front of him the great­est chal­lenge any coach can face, which is to sit on the bench of Re­al Madrid.”

The 43-year-old Alon­so is re­turn­ing to a fa­mil­iar en­vi­ron­ment.

“Alon­so is one of the biggest leg­ends of Re­al Madrid and world foot­ball. He de­fend­ed our shirt in 236 of­fi­cial games be­tween 2009 and 2014. He won six ti­tles dur­ing this time: the 10th Eu­ro­pean Cup in Lis­bon, one Eu­ro­pean Su­per Cup, one league ti­tle, two Span­ish Cups and one Span­ish Su­per Cup,” the club said.

“Now he’s re­turn­ing to Re­al Madrid as one of the best coach­es in the world af­ter mak­ing his­to­ry with Bay­er Lev­erkusen,” the club said.

As coach, Alon­so led Lev­erkusen to an un­prece­dent­ed Ger­man league and cup dou­ble last year in his first full sea­son af­ter tak­ing over the team when it was in the Bun­desli­ga’s rel­e­ga­tion zone the sea­son be­fore.

His team re­mains the on­ly one to com­plete a whole Bun­desli­ga cam­paign un­beat­en. Lev­erkusen’s on­ly de­feat in 2023-24 was to Ata­lan­ta in the Eu­ropa League fi­nal, and it bounced back three days lat­er by win­ning the 2024 Ger­man Cup.

Lev­erkusen’s 35-game un­beat­en run in the Bun­desli­ga end­ed in Au­gust 2024 with a 3-2 loss at home to Leipzig, against whom Alon­so’s team un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly squan­dered a two-goal lead.

“You didn’t just train us — you in­spired us,” Lev­erkusen cap­tain Gran­it Xha­ka wrote on In­sta­gram af­ter Alon­so con­firmed his de­par­ture. “We’ll car­ry your lessons far be­yond the field.”

As a play­er for Spain and Madrid, Alon­so dis­played an un­der­stand­ing of the game and tech­ni­cal skills that cre­at­ed time and space for him­self, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers. Re­al So­ciedad and Liv­er­pool pre­vi­ous­ly ben­e­fit­ed from his in­tel­li­gence in mid­field. He helped the lat­ter to the Cham­pi­ons League ti­tle in 2005.

Alon­so starred as a Madrid play­er, win­ning six ti­tles, in­clud­ing the Span­ish league in 2012 and the 2014 Cham­pi­ons League be­fore leav­ing for three Bun­desli­ga ti­tles with Bay­ern Mu­nich.

There was al­ways a feel­ing in Madrid he would re­turn. The club takes pride in bring­ing for­mer greats back for coach­ing or man­age­ment roles, like Zine­dine Zi­dane or Jorge Val­dano, and Alon­so seemed pre­des­tined for coach­ing af­ter a play­ing ca­reer spent man­ag­ing team­mates.

Alon­so be­gan his coach­ing ca­reer with Madrid’s youth teams be­fore re­turn­ing to Re­al So­ciedad, an­oth­er for­mer club, to take over its re­serve team. He led it to pro­mo­tion.

He ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions af­ter Lev­erkusen sport­ing di­rec­tor Si­mon Rolfes and chief ex­ec­u­tive Fer­nan­do Car­ro gave him his first job in se­nior man­age­ment in Oc­to­ber 2022.

Now he will face dif­fer­ent de­mands at Madrid, where he will be tasked with re­spond­ing to a buoy­ant Barcelona team spear­head­ed by the out­stand­ing Lamine Ya­mal and Brazil for­ward Raphin­ha sup­port­ed by a cast of home-grown young stars such as Pedri and Gavi.

He will have to put the team’s top stars – Kylian Mbap­pé, Jude Belling­ham and Viní­cius Júnior – back on track af­ter they failed to help the team suc­ceed to­ward the end of the sea­son.

De­spite his suc­cess in lead­ing Madrid to three Cham­pi­ons League ti­tles, An­celot­ti was con­sid­ered a coach who large­ly let the play­ers have their way, giv­ing their in­di­vid­ual bril­liance full reign.

Alon­so is like­ly to be more struc­tured with a clear idea of how he wants each play­er to fit in­to his team. One pri­or­i­ty will be strength­en­ing the de­fense af­ter se­ri­ous in­juries there last sea­son un­der­mined An­celot­ti’s hopes of de­fend­ing the Span­ish league and Cham­pi­ons League ti­tles.

Madrid has al­ready ad­dressed that with the sign­ing of Spain de­fend­er Dean Hui­jsen from Bournemouth. More ar­rivals are like­ly.

Whichev­er play­ers come or go, Alon­so will face the same de­mands — to get Madrid back on top in Spain and chal­leng­ing for a record-ex­tend­ing 16th Eu­ro­pean crown.

It’s just his sec­ond job in se­nior man­age­ment.

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