Xabi Alonso says the disappointment of his time at Real Madrid has healed as he prepares to lead Chelsea into a new project.
The Spanish coach began last season in charge of Real Madrid but was dismissed midway through the campaign, following their defeat by Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup.
Chelsea appointed Alonso as their head coach from the start of next season after a turbulent period that saw the club finish 10th in the Premier League.
Speaking during Chelsea’s pre-season training camp, Alonso said the experience at Real Madrid had left a mark but that he was now ready to move forward.
“Fortunately, there are not many scars in my career,” he said.
“Okay, I got a scar. Now I am healed, and I am now very excited and determined to enjoy this next step as I did when I started in Madrid. But you have to move on.”
Alonso said he had reflected carefully on what went wrong at Real Madrid, while also taking lessons from the parts of the job that had gone well.
“Looking back, I take the positives and the things that did not work,” he said. “I was very self-critical, thinking about what I could have done better, because certainly it did not go as expected. But you move on to other things.”
He added: “There are many experiences, and the adaptation that I had to make, some things that worked and some things that did not work in terms of the game and in terms of managing players. It is a mixture of everything.”
Alonso, a combative and creative midfielder during his playing career, worked under several of the game’s leading managers. His former coaches included Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola and Rafael Benitez.
It was during the final stages of his playing career at Bayern Munich, under Guardiola, that Alonso said he became particularly interested in understanding the methods of the Manchester City manager.
“We were very close. I was very curious,” Alonso said.
“I was at that moment in my career where I could go to his office, ‘Pep, why is this happening? What is the game plan?’ Maybe when I was 20, I did not have that confidence to go to the manager’s office to ask those questions.”
“But at that moment, because of the confidence, I needed to do it, and I wanted to do it.”
Alonso believes those experiences, along with his early success as a coach, convinced him that Chelsea represented the right opportunity after an unsettled season.
“It had to be a lot from here, and from here as well. It has to come from the heart,” he said.
“I saw that the timing was right for the club, and right for me too. It is a good opportunity. It is a team that has played very well recently, and the situation was not as bad as it looked at the end of last season.”
“There is huge potential to improve, and we will see how long that takes. I felt that I had the opportunity to enjoy being a manager.”
Chelsea have followed Alonso’s appointment by signing experienced players Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson, who previously won the Premier League and Champions League with Liverpool.
Alonso said creating the right blend within the squad would be central to his plans.
“You need the right balance between personalities, stages of maturity, from the early 20s to the early 30s and in between, players at different stages of their careers,” he said.
“There is no formula for that, but there is a feeling for it.”
“For me, that is as important as tactics. First, team spirit. Then comes playing good football. Then comes winning matches.”
