Xabi Alonso was sacked in January, but the coach started to leave Madrid at the beginning of November. By then, the divorce between the squad and Xabi Alonso was already noticeable behind closed doors. A distancing that the day-to-day life at Valdebebas was taking to the limit until it blew up. “I didn’t know I was coming to train at a kindergarten!”, exclaimed the coach during a training session.
It was not the typical warning to get his players’ attention, nor was it a one-off outburst at work, it was a cry of desperation, of weariness and almost of boredom. Xabi had long been annoyed because his players were not following him in the demands he wanted to put on each and every one of the training sessions. Above all, in the tactical demands. Bad faces, poor attitude, whispering… Until he could not take it any longer and said something that was the beginning of the end. He told them what he had been thinking for some time and opened a wound with the squad that never closed.
Tactical weight and lots of information
The players considered the tactical training to be excessively burdensome and also complained about receiving an excessive amount of information. Xabi’s excessive zeal in tactical work, attention and corrections extended to his assistants, who were also singled out by the players. Sebas Parrilla, his assistant, was the main one. The fact that there were so many people giving orders and paying attention to every detail was a circumstance that made the players uncomfortable. The working environment on a day-to-day basis was not good and this wear and tear took its toll.
Because Alonso thought the opposite of his players. First the Club World Cup and then a hasty return to competition, with hardly any pre-season, left the coach with no room to work on the footballing idea he wanted to impose at Real Madrid. For the coach there were many things to change and correct and he needed every minute of every training session to impose them on the team. Alonso knew that the team was far from what he wanted and that he needed to speed up the process. But this pace of work and the acquisition of new concepts from the coach clashed head-on with the team. They did not go hand in hand and day by day it became more and more difficult. Alonso was unhappy with his players and the players were unhappy with him.
Arbeloa’s name in the dressing room
As if that were not enough, a rumor began to circulate in the dressing room about Arbeloa. The name of the man who months later became the new coach of Real Madrid was beginning to be considered among the players as a solution. Arbeloa was beginning to be very present in the first team, either because the club was already slipping his name to feel the atmosphere or because the players had taken good note of the coach, who in his capacity as coach of Castilla, had a regular presence in first team training.
And in the midst of so much tension came the crisis of results. Madrid’s stability failed them and the crisis began to grow bigger and bigger. It is true that when things went wrong, the squad vowed to pull together and not let Xabi down, but something had already broken. The doubts and unease in the squad were transferred to the club’s hierarchy and there was no turning back. The Supercopa was the end, but a shout was the beginning of the end.
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