Xabi Alonso arrives as Chelsea\u2019s new manager after a rapid rise in coaching and a brief Real Madrid spell. He left Real Madrid in January, seven months into a three-year contract he had signed the previous summer. His managerial profile was built most prominently at Bayer Leverkusen, where he guided the club to their first-ever Bundesliga title in 2023\u201324 while completing an unbeaten domestic campaign. At Real Madrid he won 10 of his first 11 La Liga matches, including a Cl\u00e1sico victory, but ultimately finished the season behind Barcelona and lost the Spanish Super Cup final to them.<\/p>\n
For Chelsea supporters, Alonso is also a familiar figure from his playing days. The Spanish midfielder spent five seasons in the Premier League with Liverpool and met Chelsea frequently in a run of high-profile encounters. In total Alonso faced Chelsea 20 times while playing for Liverpool. Across those meetings he recorded six wins, five draws and nine defeats.<\/p>\n
Nine of those fixtures came in the Premier League, where he won three, drew one and lost five. Eight of the matches were in the Champions League, a period in which the two clubs repeatedly met in tightly contested knockout ties. Alonso\u2019s sole European victory over Chelsea came in the 2006\u201307 Champions League semifinal second leg, when Liverpool progressed after a penalty shootout. His only goal against Chelsea arrived in the Champions League quarterfinal second leg at Stamford Bridge in 2008\u201309, a match that finished 4\u20134 with Chelsea advancing after a 3\u20131 first-leg win.<\/p>\n
Alonso also featured against Chelsea in one domestic cup final: the 2006 Community Shield, which Chelsea won 2\u20131. He was not involved when the sides met in the 2005 League Cup final due to injury. The playing record underlines a long and frequently intense history between Alonso and Chelsea before his return to Stamford Bridge in a managerial role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alonso faced Chelsea 20 times for Liverpool, recording six wins, five draws and nine defeats overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,175],"tags":[1162,1484],"class_list":["post-13859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-liverpool","tag-analytics","tag-appearance-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}