On Wednesday night, José Mourinho walks out at the Santiago Bernabéu as Real Madrid‘s manager for the first time in this second spell. In January, that dugout belonged to Xabi Alonso. And on the eve of Mourinho’s homecoming, the man who lost the same job a decade earlier has offered an explanation for why the last occupant did not last.
Rafa Benítez, speaking to the BBC in comments carried by Managing Madrid, suggested internal politics played a part in the difficulties Alonso met at the club — and drew a direct line from Alonso’s short reign to his own.
“At Real Madrid, as you say, Xabi has many similarities to me,” Benítez said. “He likes to work, organize things, and then talk to the players about what they want to do. But at Real Madrid, there’s a lot of politics involved. Perhaps that’s why it was more complicated.”
It is easy to file that under sour grapes from two sacked coaches. It is more useful to read it as a description of the job Mourinho has just accepted.
Two Coaches, One Very Similar Ending
The parallel Benítez is drawing holds up on the numbers, which is what makes it uncomfortable.
Alonso took charge of Real Madrid in June 2025, shortly before the Club World Cup, and was gone by January. He left with 24 wins, four draws and six defeats from 34 matches — a record that, in isolation, does not read like a man on his way out. The club maintained he had not been sacked. What accompanied those final months instead were persistent reports of tension inside the squad, including a disagreement with Vinícius Júnior.
Benítez’s own spell followed almost the same arc. Appointed in the summer of 2015, the Madrid-born coach was dismissed in January 2016 after just 24 competitive matches: 16 wins, five draws, three defeats, and top of his Champions League group. Zinedine Zidane replaced him, and what happened next made the sacking look inspired — but nobody could have known that in January.
Two coaches, both removed mid-January, both with respectable records, both replaced by someone the dressing room preferred. Benítez is not claiming he and Alonso were hard done by. He is saying results were never the whole story.
What ‘Politics’ Means At The Bernabéu
Read the quote closely and there is a specific complaint inside it. Benítez describes a way of working — organise, structure, then consult the players — and identifies the obstacle not as the football but as everything around it.
That is the recurring lesson of this job. Real Madrid’s dressing room contains some of the most powerful athletes in world sport, and a coach whose authority rests on method rather than status has to build consent while he builds a team. Alonso arrived from Bayer Leverkusen with a glowing reputation and a detailed idea of how football should be played. Benítez arrived with a Champions League on his CV and a reputation for organisation. Both found that being right about the football is only part of the assignment.
None of which has dented Alonso’s standing. His Real Madrid appointment had followed an outstanding spell at Leverkusen, where he led the German club to an unbeaten Bundesliga title and a DFB-Pokal double in 2023-24, and his reputation has held up since he left Madrid.
Why It Lands Differently Now
The reason these comments matter this week is the man in the dugout. Mourinho is the least likely coach in Europe to be caught out by Bernabéu politics — he has lived them once already, and he has been notably blunt about the state he inherited, arguing that Arbeloa and Alonso paid the price for a wasted year. His authority does not depend on persuading anybody. That is precisely why Florentino Pérez appointed him.
There is evidence the reset is taking. Vinícius Júnior — the flashpoint of Alonso’s final weeks — has been visibly rebuilding his relationship with the crowd, and Los Blancos opened the LaLiga season with three points at Espanyol.
But Benítez’s warning has a longer shelf life than one good week. Every Real Madrid manager eventually meets the version of the club that has nothing to do with training-ground work, and the ones who survive are the ones who see it coming. Mourinho gets his Bernabéu welcome on Wednesday against Real Sociedad. Two of his predecessors would tell him to enjoy it while the politics are quiet.
