Real Madrid players are reported to be divided over manager Xabi Alonso, who has struggled to win over the full team despite still being well placed in both La Liga and the Champions League so far in 2025–26.
After the disappointment of last season resulted in the exit of modern Bernabéu legend Carlo Ancelotti, Alonso’s hiring was billed as a great ‘homecoming’ for the honorary Madridista.
The former Spain international won it all during five years as a player from 2009 to 2014 and had established himself as one of Europe’s top young managers following his time in charge of Bayer Leverkusen that delivered unprecedented success for the German club.
Alonso took over a new-look team in transition ahead of the Club World Cup—eliminated at the semifinal stage—but still began the new campaign with 13 wins from 14 matches. Things have gone south over the past month, taking a 1–0 loss to Liverpool in the Champions League and then drawing three consecutive La Liga fixtures to fall behind Barcelona in the standings.
Yet there have grumblings about Alonso for longer than that.
The Athletic writes that a “mix of players” currently remain “unconvinced” about the 44-year-old’s methods. However, others feel the manager is not the one to blame for the sudden malaise.
Tensions within the squad have been rumored all season and the same report notes that Alonso’s “messages are not getting through to the players,” which has obvious consequences. It is also suggested that there are certain players who are “incompatible” with each other, with a source present at Valdebebas on a daily basis last season claiming that creating a balanced team that includes Kylian Mbappé, Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham is “impossible.”
Ancelotti managed to achieve great success in 2023–24 when Vinicius Jr and Bellingham were working in tandem, winning both the Champions League and La Liga in a relatively rare double. But Mbappé’s arrival that summer meant there had to be changes and things never quite worked.
It seems like those issues haven’t been resolved, with Mbappé still scoring goals but neither of the other two performing like they had done previously. The friction between Alonso and Vinicius Jr in particular has been well documented, with the Brazilian frustrated by his lesser role and reported to be refusing to sign a new contract while his relationship with the manager remains poor.
It clearly hasn’t helped that Alonso has recently been forced to play without Antonio Rüdiger, Éder Militão, David Alaba and Dani Carvajal due to various injuries, contributing to conceding seven goals in the last five matches and compounding the issues with attacking chemistry.
Galácticos 3.0 Struggling With Same Issues
With Bellingham, Mbappé and Trent Alexander-Arnold recruited in consecutive summers, this is arguably the third Galácticos era that Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez has overseen across his two spells in office since 2000.
It mirrors the recruitment of Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo Nazário and David Beckham year on year at the start of the 21st century, with the project ultimately crumbling under its own weight—the sale of the unglamorous but enormously effective Claude Makélélé to Chelsea in 2003 is often highlighted a critical error in judgement because of the impact it had on team balance.
After 2002, just before Ronaldo’s arrival, Real Madrid didn’t win the Champions League for 12 years.
Recruiting the biggest names in the sport in the hope of dynastical dominance also failed to deliver the desired success when Pérez returned in 2009, three years after his first presidency ended.
That summer, Los Blancos broke the world transfer record twice to sign Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo, falling until 2013–14’s eventual Décima relied as much on the likes of the more understated Luka Modrić and Raphaël Varane as it did on Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Real Madrid Players ‘Divided’ Over Xabi Alonso As Concerns Raised Over Mbappe, Vinicius Jr, Bellingham.
