Chelsea have confirmed Xabi Alonso as their new head coach at Stamford Bridge, replacing Liam Rosenior from next season as the club seeks recovery from a difficult campaign. Sitting ninth in the Premier League and facing the risk of missing European competition, Chelsea have placed significant short-term expectations on their incoming manager.<\/p>\n
Alonso arrives with an outstanding reputation for tactical thought, but his recent record contains three clear warning signs. First, several of his tactical experiments at Real Madrid produced damaging results. He started Vinicius Junior on the right wing in the Club World Cup semifinals against Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid lost 4\u20130. He reinstated a recently recovered Jude Bellingham in the first Madrid derby of the season at the Metropolitano and Madrid lost 5\u20132. Alonso also selected Fran Garc\u00eda at left wing against Elche and Real Madrid were held to a 2\u20132 draw.<\/p>\n
Second, Alonso\u2019s time at the Bernab\u00e9u featured notable breakdowns in relationships with key players. Vinicius Jr infamously lost his head when Alonso replaced him in the first Cl\u00e1sico of the season. Vinicius Jr issued a public apology without including Alonso. The manager then said the fans were \u201cfree to express their opinion\u201d about the Brazilian after he was booed at the Bernab\u00e9u. Reports emerged that Vinicius Jr would not sign a new contract while Alonso was in charge. Alonso also preferred Dani Carvajal to Trent Alexander-Arnold, benching Alexander-Arnold or limiting his minutes rather than allowing the ex-Liverpool star to settle in.<\/p>\n
Third, Alonso\u2019s record in decisive fixtures has been mixed. His Bayer Leverkusen side produced a historic undefeated Bundesliga title after a season that began near the drop zone, but then lost the Europa League final 3\u20130 to Atalanta. In 2024\u201325 Leverkusen progressed from the Champions League group stage but were eliminated in the round of 16 by Bayern Munich, failing to score across two legs in a 5\u20130 aggregate defeat.<\/p>\n
Those are the challenges Chelsea must weigh as Alonso prepares to take charge next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alonso arrives at Chelsea carrying tactical risks, strained relationships and questions in big games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172,987],"tags":[1081,1162,1304],"class_list":["post-13863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","category-real-madrid","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13863","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=13863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}