Upon his arrival at Real Madrid, the Spanish press was unanimous: Xabi Alonso's great challenge will be to make Kylian Mbappé and Vinicius Jr play without unbalanced the team. This is obviously the most complicated task to carry out. Last season, under the orders of Carlo Ancelotti, the French and the Brazilian had seemed incompatible. On the one hand, because the two players rather like to evolve to the left of the attack, but also and above all because they are not known to be the most diligent in the efforts in the pressing and in the game without ball.
For Xabi Alonso, the work is therefore colossal and he could quickly observe that the mission was not simple during the World Cup. After gradually putting his tactics in place during the start of the competition with Gonzalo Garcia at the forefront of the attack (since Mbappé was unavailable), the former coach of Bayer Leverkusen thought he had found a balance in his system. But this system shattered against PSG during the first tenure of the Mbappé duo – Vinicius Jr. French contributed much less than Gonzalo Garcia and it was seen.
Xabi Alonso puts pressure on his stars
During the holiday period, Xabi Alonso greatly looked into the subject. The Spanish press revealed in particular that he had watched all the matches where the two players had been lined up and that he had estimated that his success would necessarily go through making them collaborate without creating imbalances. This Thursday morning, El Desmarque reveals that Xabi Alonso decided to focus only on the two players during the meetings. He does not hesitate to reframe them from his bench and take advantage of each game stop to give them instructions.
Already seen many times in training taking the two attackers individually, Xabi Alonso recurred in the friendly match against WSG Tirol. And he does not hesitate to raise his voice. In this match, when he believed that Mbappé and Vinicius completely released in the pressing, he urged the Brazilian by pulling him by the arm. Same story during the freshness break with Mbappé. According to the Spanish media, this seems to be bearing fruit, even within the locker room, which believes that no one has a pass. Under Carlo Ancelotti, even if he insisted on the pressing, the Italian coach had not managed to make his stars duo react and the locker room had also considered that it was useless to repeat the same thing. With Xabi Alonso, it seems different. It remains to be seen if it will last. Liga response against Osasuna.
