Xabi Alonso is feeling fortunate and not just because he is talking about life as Chelsea’s new manager with a beautiful view of Sydney’s Darling Harbour in the background.Alonso is unaccustomed to being asked about disappointments in his football career. The 44-year-old has a football CV that places him firmly among the elite of the sport. As a player, he lifted 16 trophies with Liverpool, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Spain. This includes two Champions Leagues (Liverpool 2005, Real Madrid 2014) and four league titles (Real Madrid 2012, Bayern Munich 2015-17) at club level, plus two European Championships (2008, 2012) and a World Cup (2010) with his national team.It is relatively early days in his coaching career, yet he has already led Bayer Leverkusen to an unbeaten league and cup double in 2024, breaking Bayern Munich’s dominance in Germany.But the start of this year brought a rare setback. After being appointed as Real Madrid manager in May 2025, he was sacked in January. He was there for 233 days and lost only six games. The win percentage was over 70 per cent, but as everyone knows, Real Madrid’s standards are dizzyingly high.It would have been easy for Alonso to wallow — either in self-pity, or bitterness, or both. Instead, he is in a philosophical mood as he reflects on his tenure at the Bernabeu being cut so short. “Luckily there are not too many scars in my career,” he says, speaking to The Athletic and a small group of English media at the start of Chelsea’s Australia tour. “So, OK, I got a scar, but this heals. Now it is healed, and I am very motivated and determined to enjoy this next step as I did when I started in Madrid.“Looking back, I take the positives and the things that didn’t work. I have been very critical of myself, thinking about what I could have done better because it did not go as expected.“(In terms of positives) there are many experiences, the adaptation I had to do, some things that worked and some things that did not in terms of the game, in terms of the man-management. It is a mixture of everything.”Does he believe the disappointment has made him a better manager? “Sure, sure, sure,” he replies emphatically. “Because you learn from the disappointment of things that were not meant to be and you try to think that things will be better.”He put his period out of work to good use. “Mainly to reset the energy because the energy that you need as a manager… you need to be full of energy to pull from the rest. It is very important to transmit this passion, this enthusiasm for the game in every training session, every game-plan. I used that time mainly for that. I didn’t watch much…(football). It was mainly about myself, about feeling it.”The 2025-26 season aside, Alonso has become an expert at knowing what a winning dressing room looks like. His medal collection tells you that.Xabi Alonso celebrates after winning the DFB-Pokal in 2024 (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)That is why, when Alonso talks about what makes a good culture inside a club, you listen.“You need the right balance of personalities, of maturity stages, (players in their) early twenties, early thirties and in between, players in different stages of their careers,” he explains. “There is not a formula for that, but there is a feeling for it.“After, (it is about) the qualities and the way they interact. If they have good qualities and good interaction between them, you create good connections and good bonds between them, and that helps the team spirit. This is as important as tactics. First, it is the team spirit. After that is playing good football, winning games. Then you continue and continue.“What taught me that? Playing football. Sometimes you had the feeling of, ‘Oh, I love playing with this team’. You could feel it. But for that, you need commitment and responsibility, and for me, it has been very natural. How long does it take? It can be a week, it can be 10 years.”For Chelsea, it cannot come soon enough. There have been just two trophies (Conference League and Club World Cup, both won last year) since the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium took over in 2022. The club have not mounted a sustained challenge for the Premier League in that time. If they do not finish top in May, that will mark a decade since they were last crowned champions of England. Last season they finished 10th, 33 points behind champions Arsenal.The moves for 35-year-old Danny Welbeck and 36-year-old Jordan Henderson are an indication things are already changing at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea have named, on average, the youngest teams in the Premier League for each of the past three seasons. But they have often been accused of lacking the experience and leaders required to get consistent results.Significantly, Alonso is the first hire under the owners to be given the job title of manager rather than head coach. It is not as if he has complete control or was the sole reason Chelsea suddenly began looking at buying players in their thirties. But clearly Alonso’s opinion matters in decision-making discussions with the sporting directors and hierarchy.Alonso says: “To compare (what happened before) is difficult — I was not in the process with the other ones (former head coaches). It is not only my decision, it is a collective decision.“It is not that I have the full power and I have the full vision. I like to have good people around because it is not like I have the whole truth of everything. I like to have people to get that knowledge, or to have this information that I don’t have, to take decisions together.”Chelsea did not waste time in appointing Alonso. The 2025-26 campaign, which saw Enzo Maresca, Liam Rosenior and interim Calum McFarlane all have a turn in the dugout, was still coming to its disappointing conclusion when the deal was agreed. Confirmation came the day after losing the FA Cup final to Manchester City.So how did those negotiations go from his point of view?“It was about the project because I had a view of Chelsea from the outside. I could see the positives and (had) my concerns. So I addressed them. The club, the sporting directors… it has been a process for them, some good things and other things they want to correct.“The most important point is that we made the same analysis. If we had different views, it probably would not have been the right starting point. So far, we are taking the right ones.”Alonso is giving this interview at the first stop on Chelsea’s pre-season tour. Sleep has been a problem, but it is jet lag, rather than Chelsea, that has been keeping Alonso awake in the early hours each morning.Joining in training sessions with his new players, who have been in awe of his technique and passing ability, is not the only exercise he has been getting. Alonso is going on 10-kilometre runs three times a week, setting a fine pace of four minutes and 30 seconds a kilometre.The admiration for his father Periko, a man who won La Liga with their beloved Real Sociedad (1981, 1982) and Barcelona (1985), comes shining through. Alonso Sr was a coach, too. A sign of Xabi’s potential to become a manager was evident in his youth: Xabi would sit next to his dad in the kitchen as he prepared for training and/or the team selection for the next day and would generally have “an opinion”.Alonso has played under a bit of a who’s who list of top managers: Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho, Vicente del Bosque and Rafael Benitez are among them. Clearly everyone he has worked with had a huge influence on the Spaniard, though, and he is still in contact with many of them today.Perhaps understandably, it was when Alonso was at the latter stage of his playing career that the managerial bug really started to catch hold. His final club was Bayern Munich and for two of the three years, he got to work with Guardiola. Not a bad way to finish.“We were very close,” Alonso says. “I was very curious. I was in that moment of my career where I could go to his office and say, ‘Pep, why is this happening? What’s going to be the game plan?’. Maybe when I was 20, I didn’t have the confidence to go to the manager’s office to ask those things. But at that moment, because of the trust (we had), I needed to do that.Alonso playing under Pep Guardiola in 2014 (A Beier/FC Bayern via Getty Images)“I was always curious about not just playing but why things are happening. I am not saying it was meant to be, but I had to try it. The last part of my career, when I moved to Germany, it was important to start thinking about how I would do things; how all these experiences I have would be transferred through my own personality and my own style. Later, I wanted to try it, but not straight to the top level. I started in the under-14s (with Real Sociedad) and that was the way I wanted. It felt natural, not to rush.”Despite what happened to him at Real Madrid, Alonso’s reputation as one of the best young coaches remains. The lure of living in London was a factor behind Alonso’s decision to ignore interest from other clubs. His wife Nagore loves the city, but her approval was a must. Daughters Ane and Emma will make the move, but son Jontxu is studying at university in Spain.But what was it about Chelsea, who have handed him a four-year contract, that convinced Alonso it was the right step after Madrid?“It had to be a lot from here (points at his heart and his head) and also from here (points to his gut). I saw it was good timing from the club, good timing for myself, a good opportunity.“It is a team that has played really well recently and the situation was not as bad as it looked at the end of last season. There is a big potential to improve and let’s see how long (it takes).”One suspects Real Madrid’s loss is going to be Chelsea’s gain.