Watching Xabi Alonso coach his Chelsea team conjures flashbacks of his playing days at Liverpool and Real Madrid.
The 44-year-old, who won the World Cup with Spain in 2010, is fully involved in training sessions, teeing up players with accurate short passes before hitting his trademark cross-field balls at Sky Park, the home of Sydney FC.
It has impressed his players in Australia on their pre-season tour, with outstanding ball-playing centre-back Levi Colwill saying he feels “jealous”.
In a hotel in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, Alonso detailed the long path to Chelsea through his father, Periko Alonso, a fellow Spain international and former Real Sociedad and Barcelona player.
As a child, Xabi would stand next to Periko in the kitchen as he prepared his training sessions for the next day. Perhaps it was inevitable he would follow in his footsteps.
“The road was not unknown for me. I had seen that at home,” he 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. I started in the under-14s and that was the way I wanted. It felt natural, not to rush.”
It is typical of Alonso, whose style of play was characterised by slowing the game down.Alonso took his time coaching in youth football, but it soon felt – much like in his playing career – as though he could only achieve success.
After taking over Bayer Leverkusen, previously nicknamed ‘Neverkusen’ in Germany because their best teams had only ever been able to finish second, Alonso made history in 2024 by leading them to an unprecedented domestic double: a first Bundesliga title and a first DFB-Pokal triumph since 1993.
Alonso says that achievement was “unexpectedly fantastic”. However, after joining Real Madrid in May last year, he left by mutual consent following reports in Spain of disputes with key players such as Vinicius Jr.
“Luckily, there are not too many scars in my career,” he said of his early Madrid exit. “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.
“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.”
It is fascinating to see how a character like Alonso, with 15 major titles, deals with a rare disappointment.
In the four months between Alonso leaving Madrid and joining Chelsea, he used that time to “reset energy”.
That energy is on show. In his final session in Sydney, Alonso conducted a full run-through with his squad before facing Spurs, then pulled Nicolas Jackson and Moises Caicedo aside for drills in which he backed into them and tried to knock them off the ball.
There has been an emphasis on team-building, with players allowed time to explore, go to the cinema and do tourist activities. The whole squad visited the refurbished North Sydney Olympic Pool for an Australian winter swim.