Following the 4-0 loss to Barcelona and the 3-1 defeat to his former club AC Milan, Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti received a great deal of pressure both internally and externally.
It’s familiar territory for the two-time Champions League winning coach at Real Madrid, and he’ll readily recall being fired for no apparent reason – other than the nebulous, “a cycle has ended” reasoning from Florentino Perez – after his first successful stint at the club.
But even though Real Madrid bounced back with a 4-0 win over Osasuna and have much bigger squad issues defensively than anything that has to do with Ancelotti, this time, the pressure feels different.
Even when things were going swimmingly for Ancelotti last season, there was a constant backdrop of noise that 2025 would be the year for Real Madrid to replace the Italian icon with Xabi Alonso making noise as the IT coach in world football, leading Bayer Leverkusen to the Bundesliga title and an undefeated season.
When Alonso turned down high profile job openings at two other former clubs of his in Liverpool and Bayern Munich, Real Madrid seemed to have an Alonso hire all but sealed.
As rumors continue to heat up linking Alonso to Madrid, even amidst a somewhat disappointing follow-up campaign for Die Werkself, the most compelling reason to hire Alonso may have less to do with Ancelotti than another big name who is struggling in the Spanish capital this season.
Alonso and other young coaches are often touted for their ability to relate to players, particularly someone like Alonso who commands so much respect for what he did on the pitch at three of the world’s most prestigious clubs.
At Leverkusen, Alonso has shown that he can maximize his personnel, and it goes beyond just the splashy attackers like Florian Wirtz and Victor Boniface. In his own position as a center midfielder, Alonso coached Exequiel Palacios and Granit Xhaka to career years as the unsung linchpins in the Leverkusen squad.
Palacios, in particular, was spellbinding, dictating play as a deep-lying playmaker and taking a huge step forward, with top clubs around Europe showing interest in his services.
If that’s what Alonso can do with Palacios and Xhaka, then imagine what he can do with 80-100 million euro signing Aurelien Tchouameni, one of the most touted pivots in world football.
Tchouameni is currently injured, but his underwhelming displays this season, including a disasterclass in the sieve-like defeat to Milan, likely cost him his job to Eduardo Camavinga anyway.
Tabbed as the most important player in the side after Toni Kroos’ retirement, the Frenchman has done nothing to even somewhat fill the massive void left by the legendary No. 8.
Instead, Tchouameni has been below his standard defensively and unable to consistently create offensively. Carlo was a great midfielder, but the way Alonso saw the game was ahead of his time – and he has shown a modern tactical guile in Leverkusen.
Tchouameni is too good to sell to Liverpool or give up on in any way. Real Madrid invested heavily in him over PSG and Liverpool in 2022 for a reason, immediately replacing Casemiro with him because of his passing skills.
Alonso can help unlock Tchouameni and turn him into, potentially, one of the top 25 players in the world at any position. That’s the level Tchouameni is capable of, because, just like Kroos, he has the quality to threaten for a Ballon d’Or by the end of his Real Madrid career.
But he needs more consistency and awareness to get there. Alonso has a way of relating to players, understanding the evolving tactics of the game, and coaching the position that could be exactly what Tchouameni needs to fulfill a potential that he hasn’t quite looked like reaching under the shotgun, do-it-yourself coaching approach taken by Don Carlo.
