I am not a Real Madrid fan. Quite the opposite. As a proud Cule, Los Blancos are the rival I measure everything against. But before allegiance, before colors, I am a football fan. And football, at its best, is about ideas, authority and the fragile balance between talent and structure.
That is why Barcelona’s 3-2 victory over Real Madrid in the Spanish Super Cup final on Sunday, felt like more than just another Clasico win.
Beating Madrid is always sweet. Beating them in a final is indulgent, like sinking into a perfectly cooked, juicy oxtail, rich and satisfying until the last bite.
Yet less than 24 hours later, the aftertaste turned bitter. Xabi Alonso was gone.
As a Cule, watching chaos at the Santiago Bernabeu often brings guilty pleasure.
As a football purist, Alonso’s sacking on Monday, was something else entirely: a warning flare for the modern game.
This was not just about results. It was about power and who really holds it now.
Normalization of the axe
It would be naive to pretend that managerial sackings are anything but football’s oldest routine. Bad results, philosophical clashes, fan unrest, these are familiar triggers.
Even at Camp Nou, domestic success offers no sanctuary.
Ernesto Valverde was shown the exit door despite winning at home, undone by repeated failures on the continental stage.
Quique Setien did not even return to work after the infamous 8-2 Champions League humiliation by Bayern Munich, coached by Barcelona’s current manager Hansi Flick.
Quite ironic.
Club legends Ronald Koeman and Xavi Hernandez learned the same harsh lesson: stature offers no immunity when results and direction falter.
This season alone has been equally ruthless.
The Special One himself, Jose Mourinho, was dismissed by Fenerbahçe in August 2025 after a Champions League qualifier exit, following public jabs at his players’ "intelligence.”
Enzo Maresca was shown the door by Chelsea on New Year’s Day 2026, deemed too tactically rigid for an expensive, impatient squad.
Ruben Amorim lasted just 14 months at Manchester United, undone by clashes over recruitment power and boardroom control.
Season of player power
From a neutral perspective, many of these decisions were defensible. Lose the dressing room, lose your job. But Alonso’s case cuts deeper, even for someone who bleeds Blaugrana.
His exit fits a broader pattern that has defined the 2025-26 season, where player influence increasingly trumps managerial vision.
Across Europe, clubs have prioritized dressing-room calm and commercial stability over tactical continuity. Managers are no longer architects; they are moderators.
Real Madrid’s response underlined that shift. By promoting Alvaro Arbeloa from Castilla, Florentino Perez chose familiarity and peacekeeping.
Respected, loyal and well-connected, Arbeloa is viewed as a stabilizer rather than a disruptor, tasked primarily with keeping the club’s biggest stars aligned.
Behind the scenes, according to Spanish media reports, Alonso had warned the board that repeated backing of star players over tactical and disciplinary decisions had steadily eroded his authority. He argued it was "impossible for a coach to rule a dressing room if the club always sides with the players.”
Those tensions defined a tenure that lasted less than a full season.
Despite arriving with elite credentials from Bayer Leverkusen, Alonso clashed with senior players like Vinicius Junior, Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham over rigid tactical demands, increased video analysis and stricter discipline compared with Carlo Ancelotti’s looser approach.
More damaging still was the perception that, when conflicts emerged, the club hierarchy followed a familiar modern logic.
They protected value.
Death of tactical authority
Alonso arrived in Madrid in the summer of 2025 as the club’s next great thinker, fresh from an unbeaten Bundesliga season with Bayer Leverkusen, armed with modern pressing principles and positional discipline.
His mandate after Carlo Ancelotti was clear: evolve Madrid from moments-based brilliance into a controlled, collective machine.
He introduced a fluid 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 hybrid, demanding aggressive pressing and defensive tracking from everyone. No exemptions. That was the problem.
Vinicius bristled after being substituted in several high-profile matches, including the October league Clasico, for failing to track back.
By November, reports suggested contract leverage was being quietly applied, with renewal talks linked to an "improved relationship” with the coach.
Mbappe, deployed centrally and tasked with relentless pressing and rotation, grew frustrated by workload and structure. The numbers were fine. The harmony was not.
A poor late-autumn run, three wins in nine matches, including home defeats to Celta Vigo and Manchester City, amplified tensions.
When a manager asks 200 million euros ($233 million) assets to run harder and surrender freedom and those assets resist, modern boards rarely hesitate. They protect value.
Alonso’s ideas became framed as constraints, not solutions.
"Guard of honor" mutiny
The Super Cup final loss itself was painful. What followed was fatal.
After the final whistle, Alonso instructed his players to form a pasillo, a guard of honor for the champions. It was a gesture of respect. Instead, it became an act of rebellion.
Footage showed Mbappe objecting, gesturing teammates away, leading senior players straight down the tunnel. Alonso stood on the pitch with only a handful of academy players beside him, a manager publicly deserted by his own squad.
It was not dissent whispered in corridors. It was authority overruled in front of the world.
Real Madrid announced Alonso’s departure the next day.
Dangerous precedent
This is the real concern. If Xabi Alonso, a Madridista, a club icon and one of the game’s sharpest tactical minds, can be undermined and discarded within seven months, what protection exists for the next generation of elite coaches?
The era of the all-powerful gaffer is fading. In its place stands a quieter figure, managing egos as much as tactics, answering not just to results but to influence.
As a Cule, the oxtail still tastes magnificent. As a football fan, the meal ends with unease. When touchline brilliance becomes expendable to preserve stardom on the pitch, football risks losing its soul, one sacking at a time.