Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome into the latest edition of ESPN FC. Kay Murray, Craig Burley and Stevie Nicholl here in the studio. And the big news today is the departure of Xabi Alonso as Real Madrid coach. Club statement today saying that the two would be parting ways by mutual consent. Just a reminder of how things have played out. He was appointed at the beginning of the season in the summer for 2025.
We saw him come in. And on July 9th, 2025, he loses to PSG because he takes over for the Club World Cup. They lose out in the semi-finals there, 4-0 as well, a quite significant loss. As the season opens, it starts great.
Chapter 2: What led to Xabi Alonso's departure from Real Madrid?
Seven straight wins for Real Madrid and everybody's happy. Well, not Vinny.
Not Vinny.
He might be a bit happier now. Things got really well, even after they had lost to Atleti, which didn't go down too well. They did win his first Classico in La Liga. However, as Craig mentioned, we start to see some of those cracks with Vinny. He had a tantrum as he was subbed off. November the 1st, 2025, won 13 of their first 14 games. That one that wasn't won was at the Metropolitano.
Two wins in eight games, November 4th through December 10th. This is when the problems really started to show. We started to see the rumours of talks behind the scenes, between the boards, with the players as well in the dressing room. Five straight games, though, as we go over the Christmas period and into the new year. And then came the Spanish Supercopa final.
It was to Barcelona, a repeat of last year's final, and Real Madrid would lose 3-2. And then the news came today, this morning, that Xabi Alonso would be leaving Real Madrid by mutual consent. Real Madrid correspondent Alex Kirkland is with us now. Let's get to the bottom of this, as to why this has been the case, the reasons behind Xabi Alonso's early departure as Real Madrid head coach, Alex.
Yeah, the big question is why now? Because we knew that Xabi was under huge pressure. He had been for months. We knew there were doubts right at the top of the club, really, about him and had been for some time. But the feeling was, and pretty much literally everyone thought so, that they came out of the Super Cup having done enough to keep Xabi in his job.
Yes, they lost the final to Barcelona, but they had managed to compete. They lost 3-2. It wasn't a repeat of the 5-2 loss in the Super Cup final last season, for example. So, yeah, why now? I think there are a number of factors. One of them is that I think that The way they played in that game against Barcelona yesterday didn't go down too well.
There was a feeling they were sort of overly defensive and conservative. This is not a way that Real Madrid should play in a final, even if it was to a limited extent successful. They lost the game, of course. in the end. There were flashpoints, sort of disagreements behind the scenes on certain issues, especially about the number of injuries, the fitness, the physical preparation of the team.
There's been some maneuverings there. Antonio Pintus, the physical coach who'd been sort of sidelined under Xabi Alonso, having previously been a big part of Real Madrid's success, being brought back in and Xabi Alonso had been opposed to that. Also, the feeling, I think, that things weren't
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Chapter 3: How did Xabi Alonso's coaching style impact Real Madrid's performance?
Yeah, it's the classic thing when you're basically on alert watching social media. Which of the players are going to post statements saying goodbye, thanks boss, all the best for the future? And which of them are going to be conspicuously silent? I think MbappƩ was the first one to post on Instagram, sort of paying tribute to Xabi Alonso. And after him...
Last time I checked, most of the other squad had followed. One or two hadn't. Now, this may have changed, but last time I looked, I hadn't seen something from Vinicius Junior. I hadn't seen something from Duke Bellingham. Of course, two of the biggest names and two of the players that in different ways we understand have had one or two issues with the coach.
So, yeah, it's always quite interesting, like I say, watching, having a look at those messages, sort of reading them, taking them at face value and trying to kind of read between the lines as well.
It's always felt from day one, you know, we've covered it every weekend, that we were just, I think everybody was expecting, and Sid Lowe touched on this before the Liverpool game when he was on, Everybody was expecting a big change in the way that the team had gone about things.
And albeit it had been successful, but it certainly felt stale in the last year under Ancelotti and certainly devoid of any answers to the form of some of the players and the shape. And we all felt that Alonso was going to come in and it was going to be fresh and it was going to be different and it was going to be vibrant and dynamic and And it was the opposite. And I think it was the opposite.
Not because he didn't want that, but I think it was the opposite because he got a group of players, and maybe I'm not painting them all with this brush, but it certainly looks like a lot of them. I've almost, whilst not... maybe verbally have said anything, but are thinking to themselves, this is how we do things at Real Madrid. This is what's worked for us.
And we're not taking on board what you want. And I think we saw during the season, Alonso almost evolved back into the old ways of doing stuff because that's the only way that he felt, it seemed to me anyway, that he could get results with these players because he tried to get him to do things his way, pressing and running and all this different stuff.
And it clearly was, you know, he was facing some backlash, certainly if you looked at performances. And so he'd gone back to sort of Ancelotti, sort of this, you know, not so much possession, you know, try and keep a shape. And we saw a bit of that, particularly in this Supercopa, where I think in the first half it was something like 20% possession or just above.
I mean, as Stevie said earlier, it was like playing a cup against a relegation side, the way Real Madrid approached it. So I think he had all those issues to deal with, plus the egos, plus who's, you know, I'm not playing, why am I not playing? Vinny's management getting involved. And I think he's just gone in there, Alonso, and thought, you know what?
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Chapter 4: What were the reactions from players after Alonso's exit?
Talavera, where Andre Lunen makes a save to stop the game going to extra time. A Xabi Alonso, a save that probably got Xabi Alonso to the Supercopa.
So, yeah, when you just looked at the performances, Celta Vega at home, Sevilla at home, even though they won, Sevilla were 10 men, Elche away, you know, the Athletic Club game was good, the Betis game at home was pretty good recently, but you could, in six months of a season, you could go on one hand and not fell every finger. counting good performances.
But bad performances, even though results came, bad performances, they were 10 a penny. There was lots of them.
It's very difficult not to agree with what you're talking about with the players. You know, you don't, as a coach, you don't go... from doing what you did at Leverkusen, where you could see what they were doing, how they were set up, what they were trying to do, how they went about it.
Even the subs felt important. They were happy with their roles.
You can't go from that to Real Madrid and then be told that you're a bad coach. You've got to think it's what Craig's talking about. And it doesn't take many. It takes two or three... to not want to do what they're supposed to be doing. And the whole thing just becomes so unbalanced.
And it has to be that because, as I said, a guy who coached a team so well doesn't all of a sudden become a bad coach. Sure, he maybe made some wrong decisions with some substitutions or not starting the right players. And we can always have a go at Vinnie because he obviously makes it clear whether he's happy or whether he's unhappy. But it has to be more than just one guy.
And there has to be too many who... either don't get it or probably more likely just don't want to do it.
I'm glad Alex said that... Mbappe put out the post. Yeah, but I'm glad Alex, thus far as we go to air, I'm glad that Alex has said that Vinicius Junior thus far hasn't made any statements because I think that would be extremely hypocritical because I don't think it's...
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Chapter 5: How will Alvaro Arbeloa manage the Real Madrid dressing room?
I don't think it's a secret that there was a confrontation. It was apples and oranges, wasn't it? He didn't like his lack of minutes, he didn't like he'd been subbed off, he didn't like he'd been dropped. So in a sense, as a player, There's nothing wrong with the fact if you didn't get on with somebody.
So I'm quite glad at the moment that we're not seeing this sort of two faces coming out and saying, oh, sorry to see you go, boss, and all that sort of stuff.
How much, Alex, did the relationship between Vinnie Jr. and Xabi Alonso have to do with his departure?
I think it's significant because he's one of the biggest names. He's one of the star players. And it was so obvious and evident that things weren't right there. We all saw it in literally the biggest game of the season in the Classico.
And what should have been kind of a turning point for the positive for Xabi Alonso was beating Barcelona in the Classico, something they'd failed to do the previous season. They won that game in the Bernabeu. And just as that's happening, when this should be sort of the big moment, it was completely transformed by Vinny's reaction to being subbed off early and making it so public.
I'm not saying there was no way back from that, but I think it was such a crucial moment in all of this because it was sort of laid bare for all to see. And that was always going to be extremely difficult to recover from, both from Xabi Alonso in terms of his image and his authority as the coach,
when one of the players is reacting to his decisions in that way so publicly and also sort of rebuilding that relationship. It's in some little signs of maybe rebuilding there. How much of it is for sure, you don't know in terms of, you know, a hug from Vinny for the coach when he came off a couple of times and things like that. But that was a really pivotal moment in all of this.
But it wasn't just him. You know, there are a number of players. Some of the players, we understand, supported Xabi, supported his ideas and what he wanted to do. But to go back to another point, you know, the big question is, is could this squad, this team, this group of players play the kind of football that Xabi Alonso wants them to play, or would they?
And the answer is no, and it's not us saying that. That's what Xabi Alonso discovered, because clearly all of those ideas were dropped as the season went on, and it felt kind of improvisational, sort of going game by game and trying to work out a way to kind of muddle through almost. But all of that kind of big game plan for what this team were going to be as the seasons developed,
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Chapter 6: What are the expectations for Alvaro Arbeloa as the new coach?
Or will he take over till the end of the season? What are we hearing?
Well, looking at the club statement, the word interim does not appear. He has been named as the new Real Madrid coach. And so he's the coach. We don't have details yet of that contract, but he is Real Madrid's new coach. And let's see how long that lasts. It's going to be fascinating. He has no experience, of course, of coaching at the highest level.
As you say, he's been at the academy for the last five or six years, coaching Castilla, winning trophies with the youth teams. But that's a very different ballgame to coaching at senior level. Everybody talks about what a kind of strong personality he is, how clear he is in his ideas of how he wants things to be done and how he wants to play, how outspoken he is. He was outspoken as a player.
He has been as a coach as well. I'm told by colleagues who've been in a lot of his press conferences with Castilla to buckle up, basically, because some of those presses are going to be Pretty explosive, I think, with Arbeloa because he is not shy at all about giving his opinion and saying exactly what he thinks about whatever issue he's talking about.
But we just don't know in terms of how successful he's going to be. There are recent examples of coaches stepping up from Castilla and having great success. The big one, of course, is Zidane. You know, Zidane was Castilla coach, had no experience really beyond that, came in midway through the season, just like Arbeloa does now, and the rest is history.
You know, winning three Champions Leagues in a row and everything else. Not everyone is going to be Zidane. You know, that was a very, very special thing. But like I said, there are some precedents which are encouraging.
Yeah, because that's a different matter, obviously, with all respect to Alvaro Albaloa and what he means for the club. Those players, Zinedine Zidane walks in, everything he achieved, who he was as a player, it's a different story to Alvaro Albaloa walking in.
I think it matters. I don't suppose it matters to the outside, but I think to our below it matters, where he stands. Because if you're the interim or the manager, you go about it two different ways. If you're the interim, then you're just going to keep everybody happy and keep it ticking along and just keep the ship moving.
Whereas if you're actually given the job, then you've got a decision to make. Do I do it my way? Or do I just keep everybody happy and hope it goes the right way? And apparently Arbelor is a guy who speaks his mind. So if that's the case and they don't start well, are we going to have the same nonsense way with Vinnie and some of the other guys? So it does depend on what Arbelor's role is.
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Chapter 7: How does Liverpool's FA Cup victory affect their season?
If he hasn't got that, is he in the firing line? Because, I mean, this club... just chews people up and spits them out. And this group of players have done that. I mean, I go back to it and I make no apologies. When one of the most respected coaches on the planet, certainly in our lifetime, is having to beg a superstar to run or tell him, you're coming off.
then that tells you how difficult it is to gain respect in that dressing room. So, you know, as good as he's been and as opinionated as he is, at the end of the day, you're asking sort of lepers to change their spots. And that's going to be a really interesting watch.
The other thing is, you know, intrigued to see what team selection is going to be, how he varies from Xabi Alonso, how they play, if there's any difference in their play, because that's what we've all been looking for from the transition from... Carlo Ancelotti to Xabi Alonso. Right, what's going to be the difference? That's what we were waiting on. Because you look at Hansi Fleck.
You know, Xabi did a good job and then it all went wrong. But you look at Hansi Flick, he came in and there was just a huge contrast in the way they went about it. And we were all sitting thinking, right, this is going to be great. Xabi Lange is going to come in and we're going to see a super fresh Real Madrid just doing things differently. And it just was not the case.
And, you know, good luck to Arbelor because he's the latest incumbent. But, you know, they've got good enough players to put a title challenge in. Whether they have the mindset to do that or not remains to be seen.
And the production team are telling me in my ear, Alex, before we let you go, that as of 5.14 Eastern on Monday, there has been no update so far from Vinnie Jr. or Jude Bellingham across their social media pages.
I didn't know, sorry to go on, but I wasn't quite aware of the Jude Bellingham. scenario, Alex? What's the alleged scenario there with him, the manager, ex-manager?
Well, look, that's been much less public. And I should say that's something that Jude Bellingham himself, when he's spoken about it recently in a press conference, has denied. He denied any suggestions of dressing room unrest or anything like that.
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Chapter 8: What challenges does Liverpool face under Arne Slot?
But there have been multiple reports from different sources that there have been, in terms of Bellingham's role in the team, how he plays, how the coach wanted him to play, that they haven't always entirely seen eye to eye on that kind of thing. So maybe less about personalities and more about kind of tactics and the role and how to get the best out of him.
Yeah, OK, great stuff. Thanks so much, Alex. We'll know you've got your finger on the pulse when it comes to this story and we'll no doubt be speaking to you across the coming days about this situation. Make sure to stay up to date with everything that's going on over on our YouTube channel.
We did react to the news as it came out earlier today with Sid Lowe and that is already available over on the ESPN FC YouTube channel. Liverpool marched on to the fourth round of the FA Cup with a 4-1 win over Barnsley. There were some nervy moments, though. The scoring was opened by Dominic Sabozlai with a stunner, followed up by a Jeremy Fringpong goal to make it 2-0 in the first half.
But then Sabozlai gifted Barnsley a goal. He made an error late on in the first half to get Barnsley on the board. But in the second half, we saw substitutes Florian Wurz and Eketike come on, both of them combining to get two more goals for Liverpool. Mark Hogden was at the game for us tonight at Anfield. Mark, what was your reaction to what we saw?
The goal line maybe flattered Liverpool a bit in the end, 4-1, I don't think it was a full-on performance, I thought Barnsley did really well, gave Liverpool a real scare, but, you know, great goal by Florian Wurz, made it a lot safer towards the end, but I don't think Arne Slott will be too happy with the performance, I think you look at some of the fringe players who came in and thought they could have done better, could have set up a little bit, so, yes, an important win, but I think a few of the players that came in missed the chance to step up really and maybe give them a selection problem for the big games coming up.
I mean, you look at that Virts goal, I'm just looking at the minute, 84 minutes. So that tells you it was tight. He had to go to his bench, you know, obviously. So Bosley went back to right back at one point for the second half. But he had to go to his bench for Virts and Ekotiki, who's had an injury because it was tight, because it was 2-1 and Barnsley were a threat.
And we were sitting watching saying, this could go to extra time. And in the end, I agree. I think everybody, John and Stuart and commentary and Augie have said it's four ones a little bit flattering for Liverpool. And Barnsley, we were watching the game and said, as a league one side at Anfield, they've made a really good fist of this game. I mean, they really have.
But in the end, it was just that little bit of quality in the final third. But I don't think we've sort of... looked at Liverpool and said, from the draw at Arsenal, which was decent, to this game tonight, even though there was a lot of changes, they said, this is a side that's going to go on some sort of amazing run this year and they're going to resurrect their season in the second half.
I don't think they're playing with that kind of confidence anymore. And I think you can feel that in the crowd. It even feels a little bit flat. I know it was Barnsley and they were expected to win, but the whole atmosphere around this team at the moment is flat. And it's like,
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