Ex-player: Xabi Alonso

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I’m glad to hear that.I thought that maybe since no big clubs had a vacancy at the moment he might be drawn to a midtable EPL club to continue his development before stepping up a few levels.Hope your friendship isn’t completely finished and at somepoint he’ll forgive you for this terrible lack of judgement on your part.

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He’s got a brain so I assume this would rule him out.

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Mbappe sacked another manager.Only Enrique survived his wrath.The guy is so toxic.

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Or it’s just… Real Madrid?

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was talking to someone the other day and that Alonso couldnt see one season out at Madrid has some questioning his level…

actually think its the flipside…

given the reason he fell out(reportedly) …wanting the players to buy into an ethos of team above individual, all players must work in the defensive phase, etc etc…just probably ADDS to his CV

really interested to see where he goes with this now…

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Thats certainly one way of looking at it.
Another would be that he failed to get the players to buy into his vision…

Or the players don’t want to work to buy into his vision and are full of themselves

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Still a failure. Without player buy-in, a manager is nothing…

Hard to change a toxic environment and they had fallen off under the previous manager so what they were doing wasn’t working and for me it appears they are more in it for themselves.

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That’s what you hire managers for. That’s the vision he sold management.
And that’s what he failed to do.

I like Alonso. Followed him from Sociedad B to Leverkusen. Watched every game he managed at Madrid.

But he failed.

Now, there’s a context to that.

I don’t think his reputation will be hurt too much by what happened at Real Madrid. Player power seemed to rule the day, and while I do agree that that is a failure by Alonso, I would also add it is a much greater failure by Real Madrid.

They have allowed a culture where players rule the roost and it remains to be seen if they end up winning the trophies they should, given the vast playing resources at their disposal.

One interesting data point I saw was that Alonso’s win percentage was higher than Ancelotti and also higher than both Zidane tenures as manager. Had they backed him I’m sure that would have translated to trophies.

Alonso will learn from it, and I’m sure he will land on his feet after he spends a little time regrouping.

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Hopefully he’ll learn to go to a proper club next.

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In a way you are right though in the context of Real, the egos have to be taken into consideration. But yes the manager has to take the final responsibility of not being able to get the egos working for the team and his philosophy. In that sense, I have said before, you do have to admire Pep. He is probably the only top level manager who had to work with egoistic rich players and owners and held his own and make these egomaniacs play as a team and consistently. But some section of fans would hesitate to apportion any blame to Xabi because he is seen like the next coming even though he has not yet come and we still have a title winning manager here.

But if Slot leaves, it’s hard to see beyond Xabi. Fantastic player, achieved greatness in Bundesliga and while I feel the need to balance the opinion that Xabi is blameless, I do think he is going to be a very good manager wherever he ends up

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This is a strangely reasonable post. Who are you? And what have you done with Gasband?

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There has been no footballing vision at Real since Jose left - the players just dont allow it and the only way managers succeed there is by working in a way that makes the players relatively autonomous. But that is also why they underachieve relative to spending and talent.

It’s also notable that Jose’s vision was still one that really only put structure around the less high profile players who would accept it and left the profile prima donnas to more or less do their own thing.

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Give someone a badge and all of a sudden they’re a detective…

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Well, you certainly aren’t a suspect in The Mysterious Case of the Unusually Coherent Gasband Post.
You can rest assured of that.

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Well there could most certainly be more than one @gasband

For Alonso it is the decision he makes next if he goes to another toxic environment such as Man Utd then he is inviting it on himself. Especially as there will probably be 4-5 offers for him this summer.

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