Why Xabi Alonso is exactly what Real Madrid needs to respond to Barça

Real Madrid's season finale must be described as historic . Rarely have fans been so happy and excited about the scenarios their imaginations conjure: surgical signings , a homegrown coach who has grown up in the elements, and a—finally—worthy opponent who has returned to his favorite path. Barça's dazzling play, with a moral compass, was neither as dazzling nor as balanced as Pep's Barça , which dominated Real Madrid with possession and constant propaganda.

It's true that the team has suddenly gone blind . The players wander aimlessly through a post-apocalyptic landscape. Races to nowhere, crashes, desperation, chases, and bodies in a progressive state of decomposition . But Real Madrid fans are fundamentally optimistic, and that's a quality that drives the reigning anti-Real Madrid fans crazy, especially its hard core: Barça and Atlético fans.

These two fans believe that Real Madrid fans, after a poor season and a Barça victory in LaLiga , should be devastated. They think the enthusiasm they display in conversations and on social media is false, a shield Real Madrid supporters put up to hide their inner emptiness, their lack of personality, their very sad life as a fan, even as a citizen. They turn Real Madrid fans into a metaphor for the man without attributes who was so widely talked about years ago.

Everyone against Real Madrid

A mass-man who lives only for permanent triumph—a neoliberal byproduct—and who doesn't hesitate to attack his own people ( today Lucas Váquez, yesterday Casillas) when they cease to serve his ultimate goal of victory. Like a vulgar and endless army of bots, which can never be defeated and which little by little occupy every position in football , infecting it with their banality, destroying it with their cult of efficiency.

Much of the contempt the wealthy periphery has for the Spanish plateau lies in this imagery, as if that Spain didn't truly exist outside the appearances of power, outside the suburbs of Madrid, outside the tally of imperial glories, outside the 15 Champions League titles won by Real Madrid . Ultimately, this issue of anti-Madridism offers the viewer the impression of being part of the world's benign plot. Everything rises against Real Madrid. And so it should be.

Real Madrid fans suffer and even have feelings (not many, let's be realistic). But they don't usually show them in public because they know they'll be ridiculed. After a heavy European defeat, they only have themselves. The crowd disintegrates, and the emptiness behind the club is palpable. But this doesn't last long; it only persists if Barça wins the Champions League. That's the condition for the sadness in Real Madrid fans to fester and become a source of resentment.

What Barça lacked

If this happens, Real Madrid will run out of oxygen , and any decision the club makes will be interpreted as the work of evil. Suddenly, wearing the white shirt becomes a cause for pity or ridicule. A massive public opinion is created (and Spain is, above all, a public opinion) in which being a Real Madrid fan seems impossible, and every Barça victory, defeat, gesture, or thrashing is demanded as if it were the great insurgency against eternal evil . The Iron Curtain has fallen, and the people are finally free!

Pep's team was living in a permanent carnation revolution . And on the other side, Mourinho felt increasingly comfortable wearing the Hannibal Lecter mask and a bloody ice pick in his hands. Madrid, for the moment, isn't in that danger . Lamine Yamal's Barça lost to Inter and would probably lose again in similar matches. They haven't reached that balance between defensive weakness and attacking prowess that any Champions League contender needs. We don't know his ceiling, but we do know that Lamine is Spanish, from that new generation with a flexible waist and African roots. He has the dribbling ability with his hips and the insolence of a mixed-race man in his eyes, qualities that convince children to go to war. Right now, if Lamine were to appear in any square in Spain, a swarm of kids from every team would follow him to the confines of their slum.

And the worst part is that they'd buy a Barça or national team shirt. So Madrid has to sign. That's the beauty of a threat emerging on the other side. It's not something latent. It's already there. But it's not overwhelming either. And the great Real Madrid machine, which pulses desire like nothing else in the world , has been set in motion. We already know what Real Madrid is missing: center-backs, left-backs, and a midfielder with the right foot to detonate Mbappé.

The signings Real Madrid needs

That midfielder must also know how to hold the ball and think in the final moments of a battle. He must infuse Real Madrid's game with an idea where every pass formalizes a thought. He must be like Xabi Alonso, then. He will be the father of this new project. And he needs someone like him on the pitch, a central midfielder or a winger, who doesn't seem to be among the players in the squad.

Xabi Alonso (Tolosa, 1981) is a Basque from Guipúzcoa. His football style was never overstated. Of the Spanish schools of football, the most concise is the one that originated on the beaches of San Sebastián. Xabi always had something of his time on the sand in his veins. His way of hitting the ball from a long distance involved thrusting his instep very low into the ball with a pointed motion, as if he had to lift it between the dunes and the men to reach its destination precisely.

He was in the Real Sociedad team that almost won the league title in 2002/2003 . With Kovacevic and Nihat , they formed the greatest isosceles triangle in Europe. He was called up from Liverpool and partnered Gerard. He won a European Cup where Xabi was the reason behind the midfield. His footballing style is sparing but exquisite. He was a great passer. Madrid needed him before he was born. Los Blancos are a team where the central midfielder is as important a figure as the Politburo in communist dictatorships.

You need a player who plants the flag in the center circle and commands the rest around him. Alonso is just that. He's not someone who comes and goes, carried by the currents of the match. He's a certainty. Someone who is always guarding the goal and at the same time, creating the waves that others will ride. Xabi handled the crowd without problem when they tried to break through in the center midfield position. His tackling was just another tool of the trade. Not always innocent. His kicks were iron, discreet, and painful, like the worst blows in life.

Xabi could have joined Madrid in 2004, but lost patience with the endless negotiations at the Chamartín club and chose the red of Liverpool. In Florentino Pérez's second term, his name was written in capital letters. It was 2009, and he arrived alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Benzema, and Kaká. But, conceptually, the most necessary figure was his. Xabi arrived at a Madrid in flames, where history had swallowed up Pellegrini. Then Mourinho appeared. From the beginning, Alonso was the field marshal the Portuguese needed to execute his Machiavellian plans.

After Cristiano, he was the most important player on the pitch . Xabi set the pace and Ronaldo executed. In the silence of the Bernabéu, you could hear the Basque midfielder thinking. In a team that was like a slide without brakes, the Tolosa native provided the pause and dictated the timing of the moves. The play usually began with a cut from Alonso, who undressed the opponent with an economy of gestures learned in the days of black and white cinema. After that, a 50-meter pass like someone lighting a cigarette in the opponent's beard.

And up ahead, two beasts crossing the pitch with seven-league boots until the ball reached Cristiano, and it was one of those violent goals, banned in schools and celebrated in the worst alleyways. Xabi was the purest central midfielder to ever set foot on the Bernabéu turf. He wore positional seriousness painted on his face, and even if the ground split in front of him, he would never lose his place. His inside passes were like pinpricks in the opponent's eyes. Sometimes he played them so sweetly that it seemed the ball would never stop falling. Despite his elegant gestures, he went to war with Mourinho until the very end. And that was not forgiven on the Immaculate side.

Xabi was a marquee on the pitch, but not in the locker room. His reserved nature worked against him at a club where Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo were constantly testing their mettle. The fact is that Madrid needed that reason against a team—Mourinho's—enthralled by its speed, short bursts of brutal attack, and unable to close out knockout matches. That was the case against Dortmund, Bayern Munich, and Messi's Barça. The three semifinals marked Mourinho's epitaph at Real Madrid.

Ancelotti arrived, and Xabi was injured. For the first time in years, Madrid was sailing without a compass. When the Basque returned, the entire team surrendered to his leadership. For the first time, his leadership was absolute. Everyone understood that without him, Madrid's game was stillborn. It wasn't even a question of talent. Modric was better, and they knew it. It was a question of order, of reason, of putting the game on the field. Xabi dictated the rules of the big house to his opponents, and no one objected. He had lost agility and had become slower. His play was more emphatic than usual, but also more serious, more lethal.

Xabi, with his caustic trot, whom we'd always like to see with a blood-stained shirt. With Carletto, Xabi created a tighter vortex than Mourinho's, but perhaps more effective and realistic. Balls ended and began with his right foot, which wiped the ball out with a touch of cruelty. The moment Xabi became the sole reason for his team was also the moment his decline began. At times, he seemed rusty and emphasized his passes as if with pedagogical intent. Running backwards, he seemed to be trying to escape a nightmare, gasping for air to reach his destination. Madrid retreated alongside him, reminiscent of Fernando Hierro's final moments.

At the end of the season, when it seemed clear he was going to leave, the Bernabéu began to sing to him. Ronaldo once said that the Bernabéu was like a woman, and he was right. A prudish woman who feigns arrogance and only recognizes the value of what she had at the moment of losing it. In the Champions League semi-final tie against Guardiola's Bayern Munich, Real Madrid acted like a single character in a fictional drama. It was, for the first time, an organic and well-fed army , with Alonso at the command center arranging logistics.

In a random move, Xabi went to the ground, consumed by the voracity of the match , and knocked down a German player, who fell dramatically. The referee approached ceremoniously, a card sticking out of his hand. Xabi covered his head with his arms, refusing to look. A card would have ruled him out of the final. The referee slowly handed it out, seemingly savoring the moment. Xabi didn't want to get up, as if the time had come for his nightmare, or he'd rather play dead than accept the grim fact of missing the match. But he got up, regrouped, and continued to undermine the Bavarians' play until the very end.

The differences between Xabi and Ancelotti

Then came Madrid's victory and Alonso's dash down the wing, suited and exquisite like his game; with a passion that only overflows in the most stellar moments. Xabi went with Guardiola and perfected his intellectual mastery of matches. As Mourinho said : Xabi knew everything that happened in a match and the reasons why. So he became a coach. First in his homeland of Guipuzcoa and then in the frenzy of the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen. A team of experts that won the league in his second season. It was a miracle to dethrone Bayern. This year he finished second. His style of play is the opposite of Ancelotti's. The players maintain their positions.

The formation is usually symmetrical. The occupation of space is mathematical, with several players between the lines and wide wingers who make the pitch very wide. The players give interviews and talk about football concepts taught by Xabi. Simple things they now know and only knew before. Leverkusen's game can be verbalized, but not Ancelotti's, which is based on ancient tactical wisdom combined with the free will of stars.

But at Madrid, everything will change. He has players to do whatever he wants, but only if they want it. His Wirtz will be Bellingham, if he can find his stride. Vinicius has been lost this year. Without Benzema, without Kroos, perhaps he'd better cling to an idea now that he doesn't have a father to guide him on the pitch. Mbappé is unlike anything Alonso has ever had; he's a scoring star who performs as such to the very end.

Luis Enrique couldn't make a life for him and ended up confessing that he felt liberated after his departure. But Xabi knows the Bernabéu . He's breathed in its silences and lived with that crowd and that club through dangerous times. Now a new era is dawning. And that's why people are happy. Before the season's over, the season's already over. That's Madrid. A club that displays the past like a dagger but where only the future matters. And the future is Xabi Alonso.