Xabi Alonso is the ideal Chelsea manager: If former Real Madrid, Leverkusen boss can't fix them, can anyone?

The Blues have been far from stable, and Alonso is tasked with getting them back to contending domestically and in Europe, signing a four-year deal

James Benge

May 17, 2026

7:31 am ET

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7 min read

CBS Sports

Only time will tell if Chelsea's acknowledgement that something needs to change with their stalling business model is genuine. However, as a starting point to getting this lumbering titan on its feet once more, there might prove to be few shrewder than appointing Xabi Alonso as their new manager.

The 44-year-old was announced Sunday as the permanent successor to a raft of head coaches; the phrasing there is significant, and will begin work on his four-year contract on July 1. Alonso had long since emerged as a frontrunner for the vacancy following Liam Rosenior's sacking last month, and indeed, there was more skepticism within the game as to whether Chelsea could convince the manager than vice versa.

Alonso, though, has pronounced himself entranced by his new employers, saying, "Chelsea is one of the biggest clubs in world football and it fills me with immense pride to become manager of this great club. From my conversations with the ownership group and sporting leadership, it is clear we share the same ambition. We want to build a team capable of competing consistently at the highest level and fighting for trophies.

"There is great talent in the squad and huge potential at this football club and it will be my great honor to lead it. Now the focus is on hard work, building the right culture and winning trophies."

Those words are well-timed in the aftermath of Saturday's defeat to Manchester City in the FA Cup final. One of the defining traits of the Chelsea of old, before Clearlake took the helm in 2022, was that even in their down years, this club found a way to win things. Four years into a new era, and they have a Conference League that would have been harder work not to win and a Club World Cup that left building blocks that were soon demolished amid the turmoil of Stamford Bridge.

Can hiring Xabi Alonso halt Chelsea's downward spiral after FA Cup defeat to Pep Guardiola's Manchester City?

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There is hardly a thing at Chelsea that doesn't need fixing. The playing squad looks like one that will do well to get away from the Champions League bubble. The promise of a dramatic upswing in revenue might only be fleeting, given that 2026-27 holds the promise of domestic football only. Fans are mutinous. The best that can be said is that Behdad Eghbali has at least partially acknowledged that the business model needs to be adapted.

Hence, hiring Alonso. This is not the act of a club whose director is said to have expressed a belief that coaching is not that important to success. You hire the Spaniard because you believe he can have the transformative effect he had in the Bundesliga, where the club derided as Neverkusen were reforged as the domestically unbeatable juggernaut who could knock Bayern Munich off their perch. You don't hire Alonso, and Alonso doesn't say yes, if you are not prepared to entrust your club to him.

What Alonso inherits in west London is hardly what one would call a blank slate; how could it be when much of the squad is signed up into the 2030s? He does, however, arrive at a club that sees the need to change. Handing their new manager a four-year contract is a sop to the norms of the industry, one in which you do not see a highly-rated but untested young coach and make a commitment to employ him until 2032.

Naming your new manager as a manager, rather than a head coach, is a sop to the old ways of doing things. It acknowledges that for some leaders, a broader overview allows them to be more impactful on the pitch, just as has been the case for Mikel Arteta, whose Arsenal rebuild has often been referenced as a blueprint for Chelsea. Now, Chelsea have a Basque head coach of their own, a boyhood friend of Arteta whose managerial trajectory was even more rapidly impressive.

Alonso gives Chelsea what they need. For starters, his first summer in management bore plenty of hallmarks with what his new club are planning on doing. Bayer Leverkusen had been buying prospects to sell for big bucks before Chelsea turbocharged that model, but in 2023, their manager was central in convincing them to tweak their model. In came Alejandro Grimaldo, Jonas Hofmann, and, in particular, Granit Xhaka, of whom Alonso would say at the end of their remarkable first season together, "without him it wouldn't have been possible."

Uniting these players was their manager's desire for "football intelligence" and, as he told CBS Sports in November 2023, players who could reinforce his message in the dressing room.

"Two, three guys repeating the same message you've been giving is fundamental," he said of his dressing room leaders. "When you have that, you have a big