Xabi Alonso poised for Real Madrid job after club confirm Carlo Ancelotti’s exit

Real Madrid have finally announced that Carlo Ancelotti will not continue at the Santiago Bernabéu 11 days after the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) announced him as their new coach. He will be replaced by Xabi Alonso. The former Bayer Leverkusen manager, who publicly revealed that he would not be continuing in Germany earlier this month, will formally begin on 1 June in time for the Club World Cup, while Ancelotti joins Brazil on 26 May, the day after the end of the Spanish league season.

An agreement to bring Alonso to the Bernabéu was made after Madrid were defeated by Arsenal in the Champions League, although he had long been identified as the replacement for Ancelotti, who departs as the most successful coach in the club’s history having won 15 trophies, including three Champions Leagues, two league titles and two Copa del Reys over two spells in charge.

In a statement confirming Ancelotti’s exit, Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, said: “Carlo Ancelotti is now forever part of the great Real Madrid family. We are proud to have enjoyed a coach who has helped us achieve so much success and who has also represented the values ​​of our club in an exemplary manner.”

Alonso will arrive at Madrid a year after winning the Bundesliga with Bayern Leverkusen, breaking Bayern Munich’s decade-long stranglehold on the title. His backroom staff have not been confirmed but he will bring his assistant Sebastián Parrilla and fitness coach Alberto Encinas. Real Madrid’s fitness coach Antonio Pintus, who came during Zinedine Zidane’s spell and whose relationship with Ancelotti had become strained, may not continue at the club. The goalkeeper coach, Luis Llopis, will do.

Ancelotti had previously negotiated with the CBF in 2023 on the shared assumption that Madrid would probably sack him at the end of the season. Madrid won the Copa del Rey and he continued; the following season he won the Champions League.

The CBF have had three coaches since then – Ramon Menezes, Fernando Diniz and Dorival Júnior – and maintained contact with Ancelotti. This spring they once again applied pressure on him to take over. The Italian had always insisted that he would not walk away from Madrid nor force a departure but that he would accept any decision they made on his future, and they would be the ones to decide. But he knew that Madrid had turned their attention to Alonso and welcomed the opportunity to take the Brazil job.

For all parties the difficulty had not resided so much in Ancelotti’s departure or Alonso’s arrival but in the timing of the takeover, finding the right way to say goodbye. Had Madrid reached the Champions League final, their season would not have closed until 1 June, and the Club World Cup begins less than two weeks later, with an international break in between. Ancelotti’s contract had a year and a month left to run, expiring in 2026, with those years beginning on 1 July.

Madrid had been reluctant to go to the Club World Cup with an interim manager, while the Brazilian confederation had wanted Ancelotti to take over in time for the qualifier against Ecuador on 6 June and his home debut in São Paulo against Paraguay four days later. The Englishman Paul Clement will be among his assistants.

Ancelotti had told the CBF that he could not publicly commit while Madrid’s season was still alive. With pressure building on the CBF president, Ednaldo Rodrigues, Brazil announced Ancelotti’s appointment a day after Madrid had been beaten 4-3 in the clásico, virtually but not mathematically ending their chances of winning the league.

The following day, Ancelotti gave his pre-match press conference before their La Liga meeting with Mallorca, in which he avoided confirming when the deal to join Brazil had been done and admitted that there were things he could not yet say because he was still the Madrid coach. The club, meanwhile, maintained their silence until now.