Xabi Alonso has described his sacking as Real Madrid manager after seven months in charge as a "scar" that has now healed, as he begins his role as Chelsea manager on the club's pre-season tour of Asia.
Speaking from the 27th floor of the W Sydney hotel, in the 202-square-metre Extreme Wow penthouse suite, the 44-year-old said he had used early-morning wake-ups between 2am and 6am to complete a 10km run at four minutes 30 seconds per kilometre while adjusting to jet lag.
"Luckily there are not too many scars in my career," Alonso said. "So, OK, I got a scar, but this heals. Now it is healed and now I am very motivated and determined to enjoy this next step, as I did when I started in Madrid. You move on."
"Looking back, I take the positives and the things that didn't work. I have been very critical about myself, thinking about what I could have done better, because for sure it did not go as expected. But you move on to other things."
Joining Chelsea
Alonso was appointed by Chelsea's BlueCo owners this summer, arriving as good as an appointment they could have secured after the hiring and firing of Liam Rosenior last season. Gesturing from his head to his stomach as he explained the decision, he said it "had to be a lot from here, and also from here, from the guts."
"It was good timing. Good timing for the club. Good timing for myself," he said. "This is a team that played really well recently. The situation was not as bad as it looked at the end of last season. There is big potential. Let's see how long it takes. We are in that process. I felt that I had the chance to enjoy being a manager."
Sydney is the first stop on Chelsea's pre-season tour, with Alonso set to travel next to Hong Kong, then Indonesia, then Malaysia, playing one friendly in each country before returning to England. He is not staying in the Extreme Wow suite himself; it was borrowed for the interview, and a bottle of Castaneda 1965 Bas-Armagnac sat nearby, priced at $950 (£497) by the hotel.
"I used my time to reset the energy because you need to be full of energy as a manager to pull from the rest," Alonso said. "It is very important for me 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. You learn from the disappointment of things that were not meant to be and you think things will be better."
Signing Welbeck and Henderson
Chelsea have long fielded the youngest squad in the Premier League, but have now signed Danny Welbeck, 35, from Brighton, and Jordan Henderson, 36, from Brentford. Welbeck's fee is undisclosed but believed to be minimal, while Henderson joined on a free transfer after his club allowed him to end his contract a year early. Together the pair add 863 Premier League appearances of experience to the squad.
"For me, you need the right balance of personalities, of maturity stages, early 20s with early 30s and in between, players in different stages of their careers," Alonso said when asked about building a winning culture. "There's not a formula for that, but there is a feeling for that."
"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. For me, this is as important as tactics. First it is the team spirit. After it is playing good football. After it is winning games."
"I learned this from playing football. 'I love playing with this team'. You could feel it. For me, it's very natural. In the Basque Country, we have a lot of that collective purpose, that culture."
Lessons from Leverkusen
Alonso won the Double at Bayer Leverkusen in 2023-24, guiding the club to its first Bundesliga title along with the DFB-Pokal, and reaching the Europa League final. "It was unexpectedly fantastic," he said of that period, during which he prioritised recruiting good people over simply the best players.
He said he was not trying to copy any of the managers he played under, including Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho. "It's not copy and paste," he said. "Never." He added that his man-management drew on memories such as how it felt when Benitez wanted to replace him with Gareth Barry at Liverpool in 2008.
Backing from Chelsea's hierarchy
Chelsea's sporting leadership team, led by co-owner Behdad Eghbali and sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, have enjoyed working with Alonso so far, according to sources.
"I had a view of Chelsea from the outside. I could see the positives, and my concerns, so I addressed them," Alonso said. "We are taking steps together, decisions to have a good team. This is the ultimate goal."
Chelsea have also brought in Austin MacPhee as a set-piece specialist from Aston Villa. The appointment has not yet been announced, but MacPhee may join the club in Hong Kong.
Players have responded well to Alonso's hands-on approach in training, where he takes part in drills for goals, crosses and passes while wearing old-school Adidas Predator boots.
"When I am 10 years older, maybe I won't be able to do that, so I will be more on the sidelines," he said. "But while I still can, I will enjoy it. I like to feel it. I like to be close to the players. That energy, it goes both ways. It is for them and for me."
Settling in London
Alonso, whose speciality dish is the Basque delicacy kokotxas, said moving his family to London was a significant factor in taking the Chelsea job.
"It is not a case of going anywhere I want... no, no, no," he said. "It makes sense in this stage of our lives to come to London. My wife loves it. My daughters are coming. My son is going to university."
His father, Periko Alonso, was also a football player and manager. "Because of my upbringing, the road was not unknown for me," Alonso said. "I had seen that at home. It was all work. Preparing the training for the next day. Preparing the team selection. That was in the kitchen and I was next to him. So I'm not saying it was meant to be, but I had to try it."
He said his time at Bayern Munich between 2014 and 2017, playing under Guardiola, shaped his approach to coaching. "That was important for me to start thinking about how I would do things," he said. "I was very curious... I could go to his office, 'Pep. Why is this happening? What's going to be the game plan?'"
Alonso said that confidence had grown with age and responsibility. "Maybe when I was 20, I didn't have that confidence, to go to the manager's office to ask those things," he said. "I felt much more responsible for the team than in my earlier years as a player." He began his coaching career with Real Madrid's Under-14s. "It felt natural, not to rush," he said.
