Xabi Alonso has been confirmed as Chelsea's next permanent manager on a four-year contract beginning on the 1st of July, ending his search for a new role following his departure from Real Madrid.
It’s his fourth managerial position, and his first in the Premier League. A division he graced as a player with Liverpool for five years, and where he’ll now attempt to revitalise a Chelsea squad who’re fresh off a FA Cup final loss and could end their Premier League season without a win since the 4th of March.
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Before arriving at Stamford Bridge, Alonso built his reputation at Bayer Leverkusen. He guided the club to the Bundesliga title while going the entire league season unbeaten, a feat that had never been achieved in the history of German football.
The squad he assembled and the football he produced turned heads across the continent, and a number of players from that Leverkusen team will be forever associated with his teachings. None more so than Granit Xhaka.
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The Swiss midfielder, now at Sunderland, was one of the central figures in Alonso's unbeaten title-winning side, having made the move to Leverkusen from Arsenal in the summer of 2023 for around £21 million. What made Xhaka's journey particularly fascinating was the contrast between the two chapters of his career.
At Arsenal, he’d spent three and a half seasons working under Mikel Arteta, a manager appointed in 2019 for his first top-flight managerial role, much like Alonso would be at Leverkusen in 2022.
His time at Arsenal was hardly smooth though. There were periods of real tension between Xhaka and the supporters, moments where his future at the club looked uncertain, before Arteta helped transform him into one of the most important players in the squad.
His time at Leverkusen, by contrast, was a revelation from the very beginning, a player totally reborn under a manager who seemed to unlock something new in him.
In 2024, the Professional Footballers' Association asked Xhaka to explain the difference between the two managers. Arteta and Alonso have been friends since childhood, yet Xhaka's answer revealed two distinctly different footballing philosophies at work.
Xhaka began rather bluntly:
"Mikel has his philosophy and that's it."
He did go on to explain further though: "Even to play always with a back four and never change to a back five for example, or never change like a 4-4-2 with two proper strikers. So you had this 4-3-3, with one six and two eights."
Alonso, he suggested, operates with more tactical flexibility: "Xabi is a little bit different. I think that Xabi can play a back four, but he can play as well a back five, you know? What he wants is always two No6s, not running everywhere or more of the time be in the position.”
Xhaka was careful not to declare one approach superior to the other, instead framing it as a question of managerial identity: "But I think that if you are a coach you need your own philosophy, your own tactical, your own ideas. Of course, you can always change one or two, but you can’t change so many things about it, you know?"
What This Means For Chelsea
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For Chelsea supporters, Xhaka's insight offers a glimpse into what Alonso's Stamford Bridge project might look like. A tactically flexible manager, comfortable across multiple formations, with a clear idea of how he wants his midfield to function, it’s a profile that suggests the Blues will be getting something rather different to what’s come before.
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Whether Alonso can replicate the magic of Leverkusen in west London remains the great unknown, it was anything but that for him in Madrid. But on the evidence of what Xhaka experienced firsthand, some of the foundations might already be there.