Xabi Alonso has suffered at Real Madrid the first dismissal of his still incipient career as a coach which, in the professional field, has … carried by the benches of Sanse and Bayer Leverkusen. The Tolosarra returned home in 2019 to take charge of the Txuri-Urdin subsidiary by accepting the proposal of Aperribay, who always saw in him a future candidate to coach Real. At that time he had been retired for two years and had only directed the white children’s team.
The three years he spent in Zubieta came in handy to complete his training as a coach, since in many aspects, such as tactical and methodological, Real was above Real Madrid. The club also benefited from its prestige and the ascendancy it had over young people in that ‘last mile’ work towards the elite. Zubimendi and Robert Navarro are two of those foals who increased their performance under his command.
The first year was interrupted by the pandemic and in the second, the one with the door closed, Almendralejo was promoted to the Second Division, a milestone that had not occurred in the club since the sixties and that was repeated in 2025 by Sergio Francisco. In the silver division he fought for permanence until the last moment, winning in historic places such as Gijón and Valladolid, and his team always stood out for offering an attractive and modern proposal that was reinforced in the second round when Turrientes and Navarro, who were not playing at all at the top with Imanol, were relegated.
In those three years at Real, we saw many of the influences that he acquired from Guardiola in the German stage in which he was his disciple at Bayern, such as putting one of the full-backs in the midfield position in attack, using a three-man start in initiation, empowering the midfielder (Navarro) and playing with long full-backs (Sola and Ander Martín) with an impact on attack in the form of assists and goals.
With Sanse’s return to Primera RFEF, he left the club until he was called by Bayer Leverkusen in October 2022, threatened by relegation. His knowledge of German football and the squad encouraged him to take the step and in just a year and a half he made a club that had never won anything and was nicknamed ‘Neverkusen’ champion of the League and Cup. And winning the Bundesliga without losing a game. The defeat in the Europa League final against Atalanta frustrated the treble.
The way Leverkusen behaved was very reminiscent of Sanse, only with higher quality players, with a three-man defense, Frimpong and Grimaldo exploiting the lanes, Xhaka shining in the engine area and a ’10’ who that season was one of the best players in Europe: Wirtz.
BayArena Hero
After two and a half unforgettable years, he left the BayArena as a hero to accept the major challenge of directing Real Madrid and being Ancelotti’s replacement. For Florentino, he was the ideal coach to modernize the way the white team played, which in recent years had lived off the talent of its stars and the Italian’s left hand, but needed to build a modern style in keeping with the times after the departure of stars like Kroos or Modric.
However, the landing conditions were not the best. It started with just two training sessions and a demoralized squad after a year without titles in the Club World Cup and PSG gave it a good shake in the semifinals. Without doing a preseason, he began a League in which injuries devastated his rearguard and forced him to form with teams of circumstances in defense. Even so, they won the Clásico at the Bernabéu and became the leader, but lost the advantage after draws in Vallecas, Girona and Elche and criticism for the game began to come, even though in the Champions League they were the best Spanish team. Mbappé’s injury, like Oyarzabal’s injury with Sergio here, was the last straw, because without the French star he came as a scapegoat to the Super Cup despite fighting Barcelona for the title until the end.
