Xabi Alonso was sacked in January, but the coach started to leave Madrid at the beginning of November. By then, the divorce between the squad and Xabi Alonso was already noticeable behind closed doors. A distancing that the day-to-day life at Valdebebas was taking to the limit until it blew up. “I didn’t know I was coming to train at a kindergarten!”, exclaimed the coach during a training session.
It was not the typical warning to get his players’ attention, nor was it a one-off outburst at work, it was a cry of desperation, of weariness and almost of boredom. Xabi had long been annoyed because his players were not following him in the demands he wanted to put on each and every one of the training sessions. Above all, in the tactical demands. Bad faces, poor attitude, whispering… Until he could not take it any longer and said something that was the beginning of the end. He told them what he had been thinking for some time and opened a wound with the squad that never closed.