The images travelled fast. Kylian Mbappe gesturing for his team-mates to leave the pitch. Xabi Alonso asking him to stay. Mbappe insisting. And Xabi, eventually, turning away and doing as his star demanded. No guard of honour for Barcelona after their Spanish Super Cup win on Sunday.
For many, it looked like a lack of sporting grace, something never associated with Xabi Alonso. It also suggested something else entirely, that the team, not the manager, was in charge.
And after a final that had been tight, decided by a deflection, you could almost imagine Xabi thinking: enough.
But this was not a resignation. And it was not planned. Xabi Alonso did not expect to be leaving as Real Madrid boss – just seven and a half months after being appointed. Not yet anyway.
In the official statement, Real Madrid described the departure as “mutual agreement” but it was a departure that was ultimately inevitable.
After many disagreements with their manager about tactics and approach over the last few months, at around 4.30pm Spanish time on Monday, the board met with one subject on the table – the departure of Xabi Alonso.
The explanations offered to him and his entourage were, at best, ambiguous.
‘He had not been able to implement the football that had made him so successful at Bayer Leverkusen’. ‘The team’s physical condition was not ideal’. ‘Players had not improved’. ‘They did not appear to be playing for him’.
Defeats were listed: Paris St-Germain in the Club World Cup semi-final, Atletico Madrid in La Liga (5–2), among others.
And yet Real Madrid are in the top eight in the Champions League league phase, the competition that defines them.
They are through to the next round of the Copa del Rey and are four points behind Barcelona at the halfway point of La Liga, having beaten the Catalans when they met in October. Crisis?
More than a crisis, it was confirmation that Florentino Perez never truly believed in his manager.
Xabi Alonso was suggested to him and agreed to as the club’s new boss, but without conviction. At his previous club Bayer Leverkusen, not everyone bought into Xabi from day one either.
Results arrived, and the squad turned towards him. At Madrid, even with decent results, that never happened. From the start, Xabi felt alone.
Beginning a managerial career at Real Madrid is the hardest challenge in football. Nobody says no to Madrid, not even those who understand how difficult it is to transform a culture built on individual brilliance into a modern collective where everyone presses and everyone defends.
A manager is strongest when he arrives, but Madrid dented his authority from the beginning.
He wanted to start his tenure after the Club World Cup, not before it. The tournament was played after a long season, with players thinking about holidays and others knowing they would not be there the following year. He was not even allowed to discuss it.
The signings did little to help: Franco Mastantuono, sold by parts of the media as the anti-Lamine Yamal, made no real impact.
Vinicius Junior’s crisis marked the beginning of the end, with his form dipping and blaming the new manager, he then visibly protested his substitution in El Clasico, then apologising to everyone except the manager.
Contract talks were paused to see what happened with Xabi.
Injuries ravaged the defence, while the club ignored his request for a midfielder (he wanted Martin Zubimendi).
There were no strong personalities to bind the group together. Even Federico Valverde seemed more concerned with where he played than with the collective.
Mbappe chased records, not always what he needed to recover from his latest injury, playing to equal Cristiano Ronaldo’s 59 goals in a calendar year.
Xabi never managed to convince the players his way was the right way. And without that, he could not impose the high press, the tempo, the positional football that defined his Leverkusen side.
So what now?
He must decide whether rest is what is coming next for him. Those that know him think that leaving, even though not wanted, will be a bit of a relief. It simply did not work.
But the message from Europe’s biggest clubs is clear, many would be happy to have him next season, if circumstances allow.
Real Madrid, once again, are viewed as outliers – a club that operates differently, restricts its manager, and even quietly prepares the ground for a dismissal months before it happens, aided by loyal media.
Next in line is Alvaro Arbeloa, Castilla coach. A club man. But if a legend like Xabi Alonso could not change the culture, Arbeloa faces an almost impossible task.
If this season ends without trophies, Europe’s elite will feel confirmed in their belief. If, by one of football’s familiar contradictions, Real Madrid end up lifting silverware, we will reach the same conclusion we always do.
That some managers fit certain clubs. And some clubs refuse to be managed at all.