Xabi Alonso has opened up about the months that followed his abrupt Real Madrid exit, telling The Athletic — in an interview cited by the Israeli outlet ONE — that he largely switched off from the sport he has spent his adult life inside, saying he 'disconnected and barely watched football' once his time in Madrid was over.
The admission comes seven months after Real Madrid parted ways with Alonso in January, following a 3-2 defeat to Barcelona in the Spanish Supercopa final that proved the final straw in a reign lasting barely half a season. He was replaced at the Bernabéu by Álvaro Arbeloa, his former teammate and the coach of the club's reserve side, Castilla.
'Luckily, I haven't collected many scars over the course of my career. I have one, but it's healing,' Alonso said, reflecting on the Spanish spell that began with lofty ambitions and ended far sooner than anyone at the club had planned.
'Looking back, I try to focus on the positives and work out what didn't work. I turned inward a lot, thinking about what I could have done better, because things didn't unfold the way I expected,' he added, describing how he used the enforced break largely for himself rather than immersing himself in the game from the sidelines.
Reports at the time of his Madrid departure pointed to a breakdown in his relationship with several senior players — Vinícius Júnior, Jude Bellingham and Federico Valverde among them — who reportedly struggled to buy into his methods, a dynamic widely cited by outlets including ESPN as central to his downfall.
Alonso's time away did not last long. Chelsea announced in May that he would take over as manager on a four-year deal, succeeding Enzo Maresca and beginning his reign on 1 July, a return to the Premier League nearly two decades after his playing days at Liverpool.
Speaking to reporters during Chelsea's preseason tour, Alonso said the Madrid 'scar' has now closed, and that he arrives with fresh motivation for the challenge ahead. He also pushed back on the gloom that surrounded Chelsea at the end of last season, insisting the situation at Stamford Bridge was 'not as bad as it looked.'
The 44-year-old's coaching résumé remains one of the most eye-catching in Europe: before Madrid, he led Bayer Leverkusen to an unbeaten Bundesliga title and the DFB-Pokal in 2023-24, the first league championship in the German club's history.
Chelsea open the new Premier League campaign with a London derby, the first real test of whether Alonso's healed 'scar' translates into results back in English football.
