Liverpool manager Arne Slot described Xabi Alonso\u2019s rapid departure from Real Madrid as unusual and cautioned against treating it as proof of a new era in football appointments. Slot argued that the distinction between a manager and a head coach is already established on the continent and noted the shared hierarchy in modern clubs. Both operate under the authority of the club\u2019s CEO of football, Michael Edwards.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid appointed Alonso as their coach in May and he lasted fewer than eight months in the role. Slot argued this quick dismissal should be seen as an outlier. \u201cThis is not common for Real Madrid that a manager is sacked\u2014or whatever word you want to use\u2014that a manager is sacked so early in his career,\u201d he argued. \u201cLet\u2019s see if this is constantly going to happen but I think there are other examples as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alonso managed 34 matches before his exit. The figure places him above a handful of short-term predecessors; as many as seven Real Madrid managers this century have taken charge of fewer matches than the former Liverpool midfielder.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the departures of figures such as Enzo Maresca at Chelsea and Ruben Amorim at Manchester United signalled that head coaches now carry less authority, Slot pushed back. He pointed to his own record and to long-serving men elsewhere in the game. “I have worked for three years at my first club, should have worked four years at my second club, worked three years at my third club and now here for one-and-a-half years,” he told assembled reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe clubs you are mentioning [Chelsea, Man Utd and Real Madrid], we know with one of these clubs what kind of history they have. So I don’t know if it has changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see some managers working a long time at a club and one of our rivals has a manager [Pep Guardiola at Manchester City] who has been working for a long time. Mikel Arteta has been working for a long time at Arsenal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there will always be examples of managers who work a long time at a club and clubs where managers don’t work for a long time. But Carlo Ancelotti was a long time at Real Madrid?<\/p>\n
\u201cIn England there is a manager and head coach and in other countries it is usually a head coach,\u201d Slot added. \u201cLike I said Ancelotti worked for a long time at Madrid and other managers did as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot\u2019s comments come amid a period of mixed results for Liverpool: an unbeaten run of 12 matches that contains an unusually high share of draws, which represents an improvement on the run of nine defeats in 12 games earlier in the season. The manager also acknowledged the practical context in which he retained his post, noting the limited availability of alternatives at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot called Alonso’s swift Madrid dismissal ‘not common’ and rejected claims of a wider trend. today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172,987],"tags":[299,1379,1087],"class_list":["post-6065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","category-real-madrid","tag-arne-slot","tag-club-structure","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6065","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=6065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}