{"id":23177,"date":"2026-05-14T08:23:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/23177\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T08:23:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:23:34","slug":"no-mistake-real-madrid-president-florentino-perez-clarifies-xabi-alonsos-exit-and-sparks-talk-about-jose-mourinho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/23177\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;No mistake&#8221;: Real Madrid president Florentino P\u00e9rez clarifies Xabi Alonso&#8217;s exit and sparks talk about Jos\u00e9 Mourinho"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alvaro Arbeloa eventually took over from Alonso, but Real remained unstable under his command. His first match ended in humiliation: a Copa del Rey exit at the hands of second-tier Albacete. In La Liga, the gap to eventual champions Barcelona grew week by week, while in the Champions League they were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Bayern Munich. As a result, it is widely accepted that Arbeloa will leave the Bernab\u00e9u at the end of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Jose Mourinho is widely tipped as the favourite to take over; according to Belgian transfer expert Sacha Tavolieri, the move is already a done deal. The Portuguese had previously managed Real Madrid between 2010 and 2013 and is currently in charge at Benfica Lisbon.<\/p>\n<p>Perez, however, played down the speculation: &#8220;That&#8217;s not true. Do I like Mourinho? I like all managers. He was with us and raised our level of performance. After that, we won six European Cups in ten years,&#8221; the 79-year-old said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I get a lot of messages. Some advise me to hire Mourinho, and others tell me I shouldn&#8217;t even think about it. I don&#8217;t reply to any of them,&#8221; Perez added, stressing yet again that\u2014despite reports to the contrary\u2014he does not decide on coaching appointments alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alvaro Arbeloa eventually took over from Alonso, but Real remained unstable under his command. His first match ended&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[85,82,83,3528],"class_list":{"0":"post-23177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-laliga","9":"tag-madrid","10":"tag-real-madrid","11":"tag-x-alonso"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}