After Jeddah, a Reckoning: Why Xabi Alonso Failed and What Álvaro Arbeloa Must Redefine at Real Madrid

The Spanish Super Cup final in Jeddah was never just another Clásico. It was a verdict.

For the second consecutive season, Real Madrid were undone by Barcelona, falling 3–2 under the Saudi lights at Alinma Bank Stadium. On paper, it was a narrow defeat. In reality, it was the culmination of a flawed idea, tactical, psychological, and structural. Less than 24 hours later, Xabi Alonso was gone.

The club called it a “mutual agreement.” History will call it something else: an admission that elegance alone does not govern the Bernabéu.

The Night Madrid Lost Its Shape

Alonso’s final act was emblematic of his tenure, brave in conception, brittle in execution. For the first time this season, Madrid defended in a back five, with Aurélien Tchouaméni converted into a third centre-back. The idea was understandable. The outcome was inevitable.

Tchouaméni, for all his intelligence, is not a central defender built to absorb prolonged pressure from elite forwards like Robert Lewandowski or wide attackers like Raphinha. He has been exposed there before. This was not innovation; it was denial.

Worse still, the defensive reconfiguration hollowed out the midfield. A backline patched together with midfielders and inexperienced defenders collapsed not only under Barcelona’s pressure, but under its own imbalance. Madrid did not merely defend poorly; they disconnected themselves from the game.

This is where Alonso’s philosophy collapsed. His Madrid were meant to be lethal in transition, powered by the speed of Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo. But transitions require a bridge. And that bridge once bore the names of Toni Kroos and Luka Modrić. Without them, Madrid’s buildup often died at first touch, possession surrendered before momentum could even form.

Alonso asked his players to play chess without a board.

The Mbappé Paradox: Star Power Without Structure

Nothing captures Madrid’s current contradiction more starkly than Kylian Mbappé.

At 29 goals for the season, Mbappé remains devastating. Yet Madrid are, uncomfortably, more cohesive without him. When a natural striker like Gonzalo García leads the line, the geometry of the attack improves. Defenders are pinned. Vinícius gains space. The box becomes occupied rather than ornamental.

Mbappé, by contrast, too often drifts to the edge of the penalty area, static, expectant, detached from the game’s pulse unless the ball arrives perfectly at his feet. Stop Vinícius on the left, and Madrid’s attack collapses into predictability.

The answer is not to bench Mbappé. It is to redefine him. Arbeloa must demand that Madrid’s most luminous star rediscover the instincts of a true No. 9, movement without the ball, aggression between centre-backs, discomfort imposed rather than avoided. Without that evolution, Madrid will continue to win matches but lose finals.

Valverde and the Myth of Infinite Utility

Federico Valverde has become Madrid’s universal solvent, right-back, winger, midfielder, and emergency defender. Against Barcelona, he was everywhere and nowhere. Nine completed passes in 68 minutes is not versatility; it is disappearance.

Valverde’s gift has never been volume, but direction: diagonals that stretch play, carries that ignite transitions, energy that reshapes tempo. Used as a plug rather than a pillar, he solves nothing. If Arbeloa wants balance, Valverde must return to being a midfielder first, a solution second.

Even Thibaut Courtois completing more progressive passes than Madrid’s No. 8 should sound alarm bells inside Valdebebas.

Why Arbeloa Is Not Alonso and Why That Matters

The irony is striking: no player shared more minutes with Alonso than Álvaro Arbeloa. Across club and country, they spent over 20,000 minutes together on the pitch. Yet Arbeloa is not Alonso’s continuation. He is his counterpoint.

Alonso arrived with a pedigree, Bundesliga champion, tactical modernist, Guardiola-adjacent. Arbeloa arrives with something Madrid has always valued just as much: institutional memory and moral authority.

His coaching education is rooted in Madrid’s academy, shaped by the unforgiving clarity of youth football. Win duels. Create chances. Suffer together. His philosophical idols reveal more. From José Mourinho, he absorbed siege mentality and absolute loyalty to the squad. From Carlo Ancelotti, he learned man-management without softness, structure without suffocation.

Unlike Alonso’s preference for back threes and positional rigidity, Arbeloa’s teams default to a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 system woven into Madrid’s modern identity. High pressing. Vertical intent. Emotional intensity.

“We don’t go out just to win,” Arbeloa once said. “We go out to fulfil a dream: to play for Real Madrid.”

That sentence alone explains why he was chosen.

The Weight of the Badge

Madrid did not dismiss Alonso because he lost a final. They dismissed him because his Madrid did not feel like Madrid.

Arbeloa’s appointment is not romantic nostalgia. It is a wager that clarity can outperform complexity, that belief can repair imbalance, and that demanding football, played at full throttle from minute one to ninety, still matters in an era of systems and schemes.

His first test comes against Albacete in the Copa del Rey. His real test will come later, when the margins tighten, and the noise grows louder.

At Real Madrid, eras do not end quietly. They end under floodlights, against Barcelona, with the truth laid bare.

Jeddah was that moment.

Now begins Arbeloa’s reckoning.

Thank You

Faisal Caesar

A Game That Refused to Behave

There are matches that follow logic, and then there are clásicos. This Spanish Super Cup final belonged firmly to the latter category: a game that resisted structure, mocked prediction, and reminded everyone why football, at its most unhinged, is still unmatched as spectacle.

Barcelona won. That much is simple. Everything else requires interpretation.

For long stretches, Barcelona were not merely better; they were authoritative. They moved the ball with the ease of a team convinced of its own correctness, reducing Real Madrid to reactive figures, sprinting after shadows. And yet, somehow, the scoreline refused to reflect that certainty. This was not a contest decided by momentum but by moments, fleeting, violent, often irrational moments.

Madrid arrived in Jeddah with compromise written all over them. No Kylian Mbappé from the start, Gonzalo García instead. A system that hovered awkwardly between a back five and a defensive four, its intention obvious: survive, then release Vinícius Júnior into open space like a controlled detonation. It was a plan built on fear and faith in equal measure.

For half an hour, it almost worked.

Barcelona monopolised possession to the point of absurdity, nearly 80% by the first cooling break, yet created little of true consequence. Control without incision. A familiar paradox. Madrid, for all their passivity, carried the sharper threat. Vinícius’ runs were warnings rather than chances, reminders that dominance can be overturned in seconds.

And then the match lost its mind.

What followed at the end of the first half was football stripped of restraint. Chances stacked upon chances, structure dissolving into instinct. Barcelona struck first, Raphinha finishing the move he had just wasted minutes earlier. Madrid looked ready to unravel. Instead, they revolted.

Vinícius’ equaliser was not just a goal; it was a statement. A sprint from halfway, defenders reduced to obstacles, a nutmeg that felt almost disrespectful. It was football as individual rebellion against collective order. Barcelona barely had time to absorb the insult before Lewandowski restored their lead, capitalising on Madrid’s chronic inability to defend moments of transition.

That should have been that. It rarely is.

Deep into added time that arguably no longer existed, Madrid were level again. A header, a bar, a rebound, chaos distilled into a single, scrappy act of survival. Four goals in fifteen minutes, three in four. The game had abandoned reason entirely.

The second half pretended to calm down, but the tension never truly left. Barcelona resumed control, Madrid waited for rupture. Vinícius continued to terrify, Rodrygo threatened, Courtois and Joan García traded interventions that felt increasingly decisive.

The winner, when it came, was fittingly imperfect. Raphinha slipped. The ball deflected. Football shrugged. Barcelona led again, this time for good.

Madrid chased, desperately, emotionally, almost admirably. Mbappé arrived to a roar but into a match already tilting away from him. Frenkie de Jong’s late red card added spice rather than substance. The final chances fell to Álvaro Carreras and Raúl Asencio, symbols of Madrid’s night: opportunity without execution.

At 96 minutes and 43 seconds, Asencio’s header went straight at Joan García. No drama left. The keeper held the ball as Barcelona held on to a match they had both controlled and nearly lost.

This was not a clásico of purity or tactical elegance. It was chaotic, contradictory, and at times illogical. Barcelona may ask how they ever felt threatened. Madrid may wonder whether their resistance was evidence of decay or resilience. Xabi Alonso’s future will be debated not because Madrid lost, but because they refused to collapse.

And that is the paradox this match leaves behind.

Barcelona lifted a trophy, minor in prestige, significant in symbolism. Madrid left with questions, but also proof that even in dysfunction, they remain dangerously alive. Pedri collapsed with cramp as the whistle blew, an image that felt appropriate: brilliance exhausted by its own intensity.

For half an hour it was not much of a clásico. For the rest, it was unmistakably one.

Chaotic. Unreasonable. Compelling.

Football, at its most honest.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar