After defeat to bitter rivals Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup, Real Madrid sacked Xabi Alonso. But the warning signs had been building for months. We analyse where it went wrong.
Xabi Alonso and Real Madrid parted ways on Monday night after the club were beaten 3–2 by Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup final in Saudi Arabia. The squad had barely touched down at Barajas Airport when Alonso was informed of the decision, one that appeared to have been made somewhere in the clouds between Jeddah and Madrid.
Alonso leaves Madrid with a 71% win percentage, winning 24 of 34 games in all competitions, along with four draws and six defeats. That win percentage puts him sixth all time among Real Madrid managers to oversee 25 or more games. Even the manager who has the best win percentage of them all – Manuel Pellegrini (75%) – is not that far ahead. These numbers don’t immediately scream crisis.
But at Real Madrid, the bar is high. Beating every team below you on the footballing ladder, and doing it in style, is a non-negotiable. It’s in the biggest games where managers are judged, and Alonso came out second best too often on those occasions.
His reign ends after 34 games, the final three months reduced to a cycle of ultimatums, with every match a referendum on his future. Here, we analyse where it all went wrong.
The Disconnect
In defeats this season to Barcelona, Manchester City, Liverpool and Atlético Madrid, Madrid were outscored 11 to 5. Across those four games, they produced just 3.9 expected goals while conceding 10.2. The gulf was stark.
It is a sad indictment of how far things had fallen that “trying hard” was presented as the project’s proof of life after the Super Cup final. Madrid made Barcelona uncomfortable on the counter, but the underlying numbers were damning.
Barcelona enjoyed 68% possession, more than doubled Madrid’s xG total, and progressed the ball into the final third almost at will. A more confident Barcelona would have brushed Madrid aside with much greater ease.
From the moment Raphinha put Barcelona ahead for the third and final time in the 73rd minute, Real Madrid did not register a single shot until the 95th. Their two late chances came only once they entered desperation mode, after Barcelona had been reduced to 10 men when Frenkie de Jong was sent off in the 91st minute.
The failure to shift gears once they fell behind showed that at some point over the past six months, Alonso’s fertile tactical mind had been ploughed over and left fallow.
The performance itself was not good from Madrid, but it’s wrong to place too much emphasis on one result, even if it was the one that ended Alonso’s tenure. Against Atlético Madrid in the semi-final, for example, Madrid were outshot 22 to eight by their city rivals. Atlético almost doubled Madrid’s xG and also had more of the ball. Real did what Real tend to do in cup matches: they won regardless but stumbled forward in hopeful, wilful ignorance.
By then, Alonso’s authority had already been badly eroded. A woeful run in November, as performances deteriorated and results followed, left him one bad day away from the sack. That day eventually came.
While the decision to remove him may have been necessary, it also amounts to an admission from both the club hierarchy and the players: This squad cannot function under a manager who thinks in rigid systems, with clearly defined roles and instructions. In an era of increasingly tactical football, that is a worrying realisation.
Julen Lopetegui was the last manager to arrive at Madrid with a clearly defined style and rigid tactical instructions, back in 2018. He was sacked just three months into the job and few tears were shed for the former back-up goalkeeper.
Lopetegui’s ideas may have been sound, but his name didn’t carry the weight required to command a Real Madrid dressing room; the kind of natural authority someone like Zinedine Zidane could bring. If only they could find a man who had both.
Alonso was supposed to be that man.
A Strained Squad
There were worrying signs from the very beginning of Alonso’s reign.
He arrived at the start of June and was already on the touchline at the Club World Cup just two weeks later. “It’s the end of this season, not the start of the next,” Alonso pointed out, keen to protect himself from whatever might unfold in the United States with such little preparation time.
There were, after all, fundamental questions still unresolved before this could ever become his team.
During the summer, as Martín Zubimendi’s move to Arsenal was being finalised, there was a brief moment when it seemed Madrid had entered the race. Alonso, a Real Sociedad legend himself, had asked for the midfielder personally.
Xabi Alonso was looking for a Xabi Alonso to orchestrate his midfield.
Zubimendi is one of the game’s calmest operators, precisely the profile Madrid have lacked since Toni Kroos retired. But those reports were quickly dismissed. The club informed their new coach they were satisfied with the squad as it stood.
The consequences were predictable. Madrid struggled to resist pressure while building and gradually abandoned the idea altogether. They are currently tied 30th – alongside Union Saint-Gilloise – for the smallest proportion of time spent in build-up phases in this season’s Champions League.
The first battle had been lost.
To understand what Alonso wanted from his midfield, it helps to look at Jude Bellingham and the problems he identified in his game. “His positioning is what we’re working on the most,” Alonso said of the England international.
Bellingham had arrived and immediately become an all-action hero; arriving late in the box, covering ground, rescuing games with late winners. He scored freely in his debut season as Madrid won both La Liga and the Champions League, but the performances that followed became increasingly erratic.
Alonso did not see controlled performances, he saw a fire-fighter creating many of the fires he was being praised for putting out. “Jude, in my team, is a midfielder,” he said. “I want him to become as efficient as possible. He’s at a good age to learn and to work.”
He wanted control but Bellingham was bringing chaos.
The Vinícius War
During his first Clásico as Madrid manager in late October 2025, Alonso made what should have been a routine substitution, moving to replace a tiring Vinícius Júnior with Rodrygo.
Vinícius reacted furiously, confronting his manager and saying he would leave the club if he was not wanted as he headed for the tunnel. That was the true beginning of the end.
It was not the final act, either. Vinícius – the team’s third captain – issued a public apology to everyone except his manager. When Alonso allowed it to pass without consequence, his fate was effectively sealed.
Madrid beat Valencia in their following game but managed just two wins in their next eight, leaving Alonso hanging on by his fingernails. They scored 11 goals in that run and conceded 11.
After the Valencia game, things had changed. Before losing to Liverpool in their fourth Champions League match, Madrid had averaged 9.2 high turnovers per game; afterwards, that figure dropped to 6.8. The intensity ebbed away.
Alonso would struggle on, but reports leaked before almost every match suggesting it could be his last if they didn’t win. And win with style.
Madrid’s Next Move
Real Madrid’s players have grown accustomed to feeling their way through games. It would be unfair to suggest that Carlo Ancelotti and coaches of his school impose no tactical structure, but their touch is lighter. Within that philosophy, players are given far greater freedom to solve problems as they arise.
Ancelotti learned long ago that refusing to adapt to star players is a one-way ticket to irrelevance.
The Real Madrid job remains a peculiar one. It is the pinnacle of a player and a coach’s career. A destination. Managers go to Madrid as a reward for having reached the top of their game, not hired to lay foundations brick by brick, but to oversee a machine already in motion.
Nobody seriously expected Madrid to become a reflection of Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen. But the contrast was still striking.
In his title-winning Bundesliga season in 2023-24, Alonso played a 3-4-2-1 formation in every single league game. This season, he never found a shape he could return to. In 19 league games, Madrid lined up in 15 different formations.
Alonso’s initial reaction to his dismissal was shock. Relief may follow. At 44, he will soon receive calls from Europe’s biggest clubs, his reputation largely intact despite the colossal failure of his Madrid spell.
Álvaro Arbeloa now steps in, facing a job that will demand more political skill than tactical imagination. But where Real Madrid go from here and who they choose to guide them into the future may ultimately prove more consequential than the brief, turbulent reign of Xabi Alonso that has just come to an end.
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