I think it was Juan Antonio Palomino, the tweeter known as Van Palomaain, who died in the Angrois train accident in 2014, who said that he should come to Madrid to train as a single man. Van Palomaain was referring to the fact that not even the Mick Jagger of the 60s could stand that bench: after two months at the Bernabéu he would cut his hair and enroll in Law. It is likely that Alonso – married and with a cosmopolitan football culture, who found that he did not expect everything that the Basque gave him – has miscalculated the suffocating and unusual pressure of the club he knows best of all, and to which he dedicated years of playing and studying. It is likely, I say, that even Alonso, an intelligent guy with character, who has made few or no false steps in his career, believed in the summer that he was prepared for the biggest undertaking of any coach, which is to take charge of Real Madrid. The secret, however, is to arrive at Madrid knowing that no one is, that no one lasts here more than three years in a row without it costing them their youth or sanity.
Xabi arrived in strange conditions for a race without improvisations: That is, he got on the moving train, and a train that had already derailed in all the competitions. It was a gesture of courage, something that can be paid dearly in Madrid. Maybe that was the first false step.
On the field, high block, sacrifice of the forwards and a boy from the quarry who exemplified the bite he intended: Gonzalo. He was the figure of Madrid in the World Cup and showed what Alonso wanted in Vinicius, with a marvelous physique: to bite in the pressure and overflow from the top. The stripes, the status of first star, were placed on Kylian Mbappé as soon as the season began. And the Frenchman, uncontrolled, supported Madrid with goals of all kinds. In the squad, three left backs, eternally injured center backs with a history of serious injuries and a midfield without a player capable of holding the ball, of stopping the game, of giving the team drinkable possession.
It was still a great piece of equipment, but made in an irregular manner. For Xabi’s idea, that high pressure, quick recovery and everyone shooting up, he needed players who either did not measure up or directly abstained from duties. Many years ago, when he was one of Mourinho’s most recognizable marshals on the field (the other was Arbeloa), he said a phrase that raised some effervescence because it captured well the spirit of that team that broke the record for goals in the League: “At Madrid we are not very comfortable with defensive possession: we are rock & roll. Boom. Tralla and things happen,” he told Guardiola’s biographer, Martí Perarnau.
In some way, in a more sophisticated way because times change, Alonso’s idea in Madrid was not far from that of Mourinho, the coach who made Cristiano Ronaldo cry in the locker room for not chasing the rival left back in a match. A fast and aggressive team that would offer quick transitions, that would get the crowd up and moving like a violent accordion to the panic of the rival.
Something that was in line with the admiration that Alonso always had for Luis Suárez when Suárez played for Liverpool: a rabid, annoying, fast-paced striker, who went to clash with anyone and killed. Maybe he looked for something of that in Gonzalo because he couldn’t find it in Endrick in training – it’s a conjecture – nor in Mbappé or Vinicius – this is not – in the games. But he didn’t make anyone cry, as far as we know, and that’s where the problems started. Maybe he tried to make Güler a kind of Kroos because they didn’t bring him anyone even remotely similar; no one, really. It would be stupid in any case not to hold him responsible for the game and the defeats. He changed his mind, compromised with players who deserved punishment (at the request of the box? It would be worse) and in the end he ended up not knowing what Madrid wanted. It helps the confusion and helplessness that there are players in there, including Bellingham, whose level is sometimes so alarming that it is unknown if they don’t like the position or if they don’t like football directly.
It is paradoxical that his departure occurred after , managing to decentralize Barcelona in the first half and tighten it at the end of the second thanks to the changes. Paradoxical, because his departure began in another Clásico, the one he won at the Santiago Bernabéu. There he replaced Vinicius who, in the center of the field and with all the cameras pointed at him, launched into a shouting attack against the coach. Thus, a victory that put Madrid in the lead with four points of difference became a crisis that increased when Almost at the same time, in Liverpool, star Salah’s lack of respect for his coach left him out of the squad for the next game. Many times more games are won by educating than by training, making it clear who is in charge and why they are in charge, rather than leaving authority along the way.
“If there is a team in the world that can wear a dragon on its shirt, it is Real Madrid,” said Florentino Pérez when Madrid, having won the Décima, presented a third kit. The dragon, its flames, once again flies uncontrollably through the Bernabéu in the middle of the season with the big titles in dispute. It would not be the first time, in a new unpredictable outburst, that the animal looks back at Europe, where it has always licked its wounds.
