Alonso: Madrid scar has healed, now Chelsea get the real project

Xabi Alonso's Chelsea are being shaped in his own image during this Australian pre-season. At Sydney FC's broadcaster Park base, the 44-year-old World Cup winner with Spain in 2010 is not simply observing. He is feeding short passes into team-mates' feet, then switching play with long diagonal balls - the old Liverpool and Real Madrid midfielder surfacing in the training gear of a manager. His squad has taken notice. Defender Levi Colwill admitted watching his coach work makes him 'jealous.' Alonso's football education began at home: his father, Periko Alonso, was a Spain international and former Real Sociedad and Barcelona player who would plan training sessions at their kitchen table. Young Xabi stood beside him, absorbing a world he would one day enter. 'That road was not unknown for me,' Alonso said. 'I'm not saying it was meant to be, but I had to try it. I wanted to try it, but not straight to the top level.' He started in under-14s and resisted the urge to rush. That patience eventually took him to Bayer Leverkusen, a club once mocked as 'Neverkusen' for a habit of falling short. In 2024 he led them to a first Bundesliga title and a first DFB-Pokal since 1993. He called the achievement 'unexpectedly fantastic.' Yet a rare failure followed. Alonso joined Real Madrid in May last year and left by mutual consent, with reports in Spain pointing to disagreements involving Vinicius Jr. 'Luckily, there are not too many scars in my career,' he said. 'I got a scar, now it is healed and I am determined to enjoy this next step as I did when I started in Madrid.' He added: 'For the things that didn't work, I have been very critical of myself, thinking about what I could have done better. You learn from the disappointment of things.' For a man with 15 major titles, that was a rare shift in the script. The four months before he took over Chelsea became a reset. In his final session in Sydney, ahead of facing Spurs, he pulled Nicolas Jackson and Moises Caicedo aside, backing into them to test their physical strength. He also gave the group room to breathe: the squad visited the refurbished North Sydney Olympic Pool for a winter swim. Alonso spent three weeks in early May holding discreet meetings in London and his hometown of San Sebastian before deciding Chelsea was right for him. Liverpool, a club he knows well, did not make him an offer. The attraction of Chelsea lay in shared purpose. 'I had a view of Chelsea from the outside. I could see the positives and my concerns, so I addressed them,' he explained. 'We had the same ideas, the same analysis.' That alignment has already produced Chelsea's first-choice attacking target, Morgan Rogers, who joined from Aston Villa for £117m despite interest from Arsenal. Marco Palestra arrived from Atalanta to fit the system Alonso used at Leverkusen, while talks continue with Rayo Vallecano's Pep Chavarria. Alonso's remit is bigger than the title 'head coach' - he is the club's first manager, and he believes the project is only getting started. 'We have taken a few steps,' he said, 'but I feel that we can still take a few more.'