Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 18:36
One hundred and ninety-eight days after taking over as coach of Real Madrid, Xabi Alonso is taking the position this Wednesday. Five setbacks in the last seven games have turned the duel with Manchester City into a plebiscite for the Guipuzcoan coach, who could be sentenced as owner of the white bench by another poor performance against the team led by Pep Guardiola. The Santpedor coach, who will parade through the merengue coliseum for the fourth consecutive season and sixth time in the last seven years, can put the finishing touch on a figure whom he molded during two seasons at Bayern and whom many saw as a possible mimicry of his in a Madrid style, but who is not being able to stem a crisis that is advancing uncontrollably.
The defeat against Celta, even tougher in form than in substance, has left Xabi Alonso with no margin for error, who is suffering the same evils that condemned Carlo Ancelotti in his day. Poor sports planning, an endless list of injuries and, above all, the endemic vices of a squad that seems incorrigible and on top of that has not hit it off with the Basque, have put against the wall the project of a coach who was called to revolutionize the football culture of the fifteen-time European champion after turning Leverkusen into an envied signature team, but whose authority was undermined by Vinicius’s rudeness in the classic and has not been able to impose his ideas. Only an immediate and convincing reaction against the coach most hated by Real Madrid fans could breathe extra life into a strategist who, despite everything, does not give up.
«When you are coach of Real Madrid you have to be prepared to enjoy these situations calmly and responsibly. I’m really looking forward to everything that’s coming, which starts tomorrow. Since yesterday the Celta thing has been closing and today it is only City. In football you can change perspective quickly and we are at that moment,” said Xabi Alonso in the preview of a match in which, more than ever, he needs his players to give their all.
«We are all in this together and we have to get through the good and not so good times. We must be convinced that the next meeting is an opportunity. As I said, we have a very nice and exciting game. From now on when we train, our eyes have to light up to play and have that energy so that the Bernabéu likes what it sees and feels the emotional connection. It has to start from us. If that happens, we will have a good chance of winning,” the Gipuzkoan remarked shortly after Tchouaméni stood up for the coach and transferred the responsibility of redirecting the crisis to the locker room in the press room. “Against Celta we lacked intensity and in other games too,” said the Ruán pivot, who stressed that to stay afloat they must “everyone, coach and team, fight in the same direction.”
Finally, creating common cause between the coaching staff and the team is essential for Real Madrid to emerge well from a summary trial that the whites will face with a very fair number of personnel. Xabi Alonso has up to seven absences due to injury, six of them in the defensive area. To this we must add the doubt of Mbappé, who apart from the ring finger that he broke during the duel with Celta, has muscle discomfort in his left leg that would limit, in the best of cases, the ability to act of the footballer who has been responsible for 75% of the twelve goals that Real Madrid has scored in the current edition of the Champions League and who was the great protagonist of the play-off tie that crossed the whites with City last year, scoring a goal at the Etihad and a hat-trick at the Bernabéu. The presence or not of Bondy’s star is the great unknown of an eleven that, otherwise, comes out alone given the lack of alternatives, with Valverde as an emergency right back and Ceballos covering the gap that the Uruguayan will leave in the engine room.
La espina de Haaland
Opposite will be a City that has a much smaller war report -Kovacic and Rodri- and a streak diametrically opposite to that of Real Madrid -six wins and two defeats in its last eight meetings between Premier and Champions League-, but that has more problems in Europe. The defeat suffered at the hands of Leverkusen in the previous round adds pressure to the ‘cityzens’, who have gone four games in a row without beating the whites since the 4-0 win at the Etihad that preluded the Mancunian team’s only ‘orejona’ and need the victory to storm the aristocratic part of the table. Haaland, who still doesn’t know what it’s like to score at the Bernabéu after two previous visits, aspires to get rid of the thorn. More wood in the middle of the fire.
-Probable alignments:
Real Madrid: Courtois, valleis, sencio, rüdiger, races, shame güler, tqueauary, ceballos, bellingham, Mbapé and Vinicius.
Manchester City: Donnarumma, Matheus Nunes, Gvardiol, Ruben Dias, O’Reilly, Nico Gonzalez, Foden, Reijnders, Bernardo Silva, Doku y Haaland.
Referee: Clément Turpin (France).
Time: 9:00 p.m.
Stadium: Santiago Bernabéu.
TV: Movistar Champions League.
