Xabi Alonso‘s Real Madrid is slowly taking shape. The Tolosa-born coach has had very little time, just two weeks since he started working with a small group that has been growing day by day, and with the difficult task of leaving his mark to build a better team that can compete in the Club World Cup with a guarantee of success. It was in the second game that we began to get a sense of what the Basque coach wants to do, but from within, the feelings of the players and the technical staff are different, not only in terms of the idea of football, but also in the types of training, which have moved from a system of the past to a modern system, training for the 21st century.
Xabi Alonso modernizes training
They are simply different ways of seeing soccer, of applying different training methods, and only time will tell if it is better or worse. The truth is that Xabi Alonso has brought a breath of fresh air to the Real Madrid dressing room, a different way of working, of applying new concepts and new performance techniques, in short, a more modern way of preparing the squad, and as they say from inside the dressing room, there has been a shift from training methods from another era, from the last century, to 21st-century training.
What Xabi Alonso is proposing to his players are new training concepts, performance concepts never seen before at the club, more evolved, more geared towards contemporary soccer, towards the globalized soccer that reaches every corner of the world, more dynamism, more movement, more global vision, more performance and physical preparation, and more personalization, focused on getting the best out of each individual to create the best collective mix and reflect that on the field.
Xabi Alonso’s involvement
During the Carlo Ancelotti era, the Italian coach was a supervisor, while his coaching staff was in charge of preparation on the pitch. He observed, drew his own conclusions, conveyed ideas and guidelines, and monitored progress. Xabi Alonso is more involved individually in every aspect of the game, in every individual aspect of each member of his squad, with more direct communication with the players.
The Real Madrid coach has brought a way of training never seen before at the club, with modern techniques. He belongs to a new breed of coaches, with new methods and new ideas, and in the case of Xabi Alonso, having absorbed the best from the coaches who have dominated football over the last two decades.
Ancelotti’s legacy
Xabi Alonso is modernizing Real Madrid with new methods and ideas, but now he has to prove that modernization is synonymous with success. Carlo Ancelotti, with his traditional approach, has left the team with a record that will be very difficult for anyone to beat, having been one of the main architects of the best Real Madrid team in history, the most successful and feared in Europe. Together with Zidane, they have set the bar very high. Now it is time to start a new era, with a style of football that, like everything in life, moves forward, brings new ideas and offers a new vision and approach. But let’s not forget what football is: a sport in which the team that scores the most goals in the opponent’s goal wins, and that essence will remain unchanged.
Xabi Alonso has a lot of work ahead of him. We are beginning to get a glimpse of the ideas he has in store and how he wants to play football, but Real Madrid’s goal remains the same: to reign once again in Europe and the world. The most important thing is that the new systems and methods of work lead to victory.