If Alonso is not good enough for Real, then who is?
Philipp Lahm has offered a strong defense of his former teammate Xabi Alonso, framing the Real Madrid job as a unique test that very few coaches are truly equipped to pass.
Writing in his column for Die Zeit, the former Bayern Munich and Germany captain argues that judging any coach by ordinary standards is almost pointless when the setting is the Bernabéu, because Real Madrid is not just another elite club. It is a club with a myth, a hierarchy, and an internal dynamic where status, aura, and personal authority can matter as much as tactical ideas.
Lahm’s starting point is the comparison with the most successful modern Real Madrid coaches, especially Carlo Ancelotti and Zinédine Zidane. In his view, it is only with time that their influence becomes fully visible, because their value was not limited to match plans or substitutions. Their biggest advantage was the way they functioned inside a dressing room filled with world-class egos and global superstars. Between 2014 and 2024, Lahm notes, the pair won the Champions League three times with Real Madrid, and he sees that success as proof of a specific kind of suitability: they had lived their entire football lives among exceptional players, and they carried a presence that automatically commanded respect.
That word, aura, is central to Lahm’s argument. For him, Real Madrid is not a club where a coach can rely only on being a meticulous strategist or a charismatic motivator. The Real bench demands something else: a figure whose career and personal history are so big that even the biggest stars instinctively accept his authority. Lahm suggests that this is precisely why Ancelotti and Zidane were such natural fits. Not because they are identical managers, but because both came from environments where elite talent was the norm, not the exception. They understood how top players think, how they respond to criticism, how they react when benched, and how fragile confidence can be even at the highest level.
Lahm then extends that logic to Alonso, which is the heart of his defense. He argues Alonso has the same profile. Not only because Alonso was a top player, but because he played in the kind of teams that prepare you for Madrid: squads full of stars, pressure, and constant expectation. Lahm’s phrasing is striking: Alonso is essentially Ancelotti, but with twenty years less experience. It is not meant as a downgrade, but as a description of potential. In Lahm’s framing, Alonso has the baseline qualities that matter most in Madrid’s ecosystem, even if he lacks the long managerial track record that usually protects a coach during difficult weeks.
But Lahm also makes it clear why this becomes complicated. Alonso’s coaching success at Bayer Leverkusen, according to him, came in a context where Alonso was the undisputed leader. He had absolute authority inside the club, and he used his own playing identity to give the team stability. In other words, Alonso built a structure around his ideas, and the environment allowed that structure to take root. Real Madrid is different. At Madrid, the coach is rarely the undisputed star. Even when you win, you are sharing the stage with players whose fame and power extend far beyond the football pitch.
To underline how different Madrid is, Lahm brings in history and symbolism. He mentions Alfredo Di Stéfano and the era when Real won five European Cups between 1956 and 1960, suggesting that the club’s identity is still shaped by that legacy. The point is not nostalgia for its own sake. The point is that Real Madrid operates with a sense of destiny, a belief that it is supposed to win in Europe, and that belief fuels a particular kind of pressure. At clubs like that, a coach is judged not only on results but on how those results align with the club’s self-image.
Lahm then pushes further into the club’s power structure, where he draws an even sharper distinction between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. He describes Real as a players’ club to an extreme degree. In his view, Florentino Pérez sits at the top as a hugely powerful president who invests massive money in superstar talent. He notes that only in Saudi Arabia can stars like Kylian Mbappé or Vinícius Júnior earn more, stressing the scale of Real’s wage power and market pull. That financial reality reinforces the idea that the club is built around marquee individuals, and those individuals expect a certain freedom because the entire institution is designed to maximize their brilliance.
The implication is that, at Real Madrid, the coach is often treated as replaceable. Lahm bluntly says Pérez views coaches as interchangeable, and that this is what makes the job the ultimate challenge in world football. It is not simply about outsmarting opponents. It is about lasting inside an environment where patience is limited, the standards are absolute, and power is concentrated around the president and the star players. That combination can make even competent coaches look expendable if the dressing room mood shifts or if one month of results fails to meet expectations.
One of Lahm’s most interesting points is about the culture of information and control. He contrasts Leverkusen players, who would absorb detailed tactical meetings eagerly, with Madrid’s stars, who can perceive those same meetings as a restriction of individuality and freedom. That difference is profound. In many clubs, players want guidance and structure because it improves them. At Real, some players may already believe their instincts are the reason they are there. So the coach must find a balance: impose enough structure to function as a team, but not so much that the biggest personalities feel constrained.
That is where Lahm’s defense of Alonso becomes less about one coach and more about what the job actually is. The Real Madrid coach is not merely a trainer. He is a political figure inside a global institution. He has to manage status hierarchies, protect the stars’ confidence, keep the squad aligned, and still deliver results while the outside noise never stops. A coach can win a big match and still be questioned the next week. He can improve the team and still be considered temporary. The margin for error is thin, and the expectations are not rational by normal sporting standards.
In that context, Lahm’s rhetorical question, if Alonso is not good enough, who is, becomes the natural conclusion of his argument. Because if the bar is not just competence, but a perfect mix of prestige, calm authority, tactical clarity, and political survival skills, then the pool of candidates shrinks dramatically. Lahm’s point is that Alonso may not be flawless, and he may not have decades on the bench, but he has something that many coaches will never have: lived experience at the top of the sport, credibility with elite players, and the kind of presence that can travel into the most demanding dressing room in world football.
Ultimately, Lahm is not simply excusing Alonso. He is reframing the debate. In his eyes, the Real Madrid job is designed to break coaches, and the ones who succeed are not necessarily the best tacticians, but the ones whose authority is accepted instantly by the biggest stars and whose personality can withstand a club that treats managerial stability as optional. Under those conditions, he argues, judging Alonso harshly says more about the environment than it does about the coach.
