Xabi Alonso is the last manager who should take on BlueCo Chelsea challenge | OneFootball

Not long ago we insisted Andoni Iraola would be mad not to accept the Chelsea job. So why should Xabi Alonso avoid it?

BlueCo – the Chelsea consortium led by Behdad Eghbali’s Clearlake Capital and investor Todd Boehly – began their Stamford Bridge tenure with world-class, Champions League-winning manager Thomas Tuchel in charge and have just sacked a former Hull City and Strasbourg boss after 106 days at the helm.

Their reign has been a disaster; they’ve made numerous, wide-ranging mistakes to turn a trophy-winning machine into an utter shambles after treating a football club like a private equity experiment.

The self-appointed smartest people in the room who have proven time again across four years that they are in fact the stupidest to lead to understandable but ill-considered suggestions that any top coach should steer well clear of working under them.

Gary O’Neil wishes he had but Chelsea being a mess is precisely what makes them a hugely attractive proposition for upwardly mobile managers like Iraola.

The Spaniard is currently set to leave little old Bournemouth with the extraordinary parting gift of Champions League football. He has a whole lot of credit in the bank but is yet to experience life at a top-tier football club.

Chelsea under BlueCo is the freest of free hits for him. Fail and he’s the latest and best example of an unworkable Chelsea project; he can leave with his reputation intact and remain very much in the running for another top job.

Succeed and he will not only have the team and resources to challenge for major titles, but will be hailed as a genius for turning Chelsea around. That kudos would grant him the pick of literally any job in world football.

Xabi Alonso has already been to the top. He’s had the biggest job and was sacked after less than eight months.

Like Iraola would at Chelsea, Alonso has been given a bye for failing at Real Madrid. “Yeah, but look what he did at Bayer Leverkusen,” is the response to those doubting his credentials to take over at Chelsea, or indeed Liverpool, for whom he lingers as a tempting alternative to Arne Slot.

What we’ve seen since his departure, including but not limited to one player hospitalising another with a ‘traumatic brain injury’ and over 70 million people signing a petition to see the back of the greatest footballer in the world, has reinforced claims from his champions that Alonso was doing a perfectly decent job in the most challenging of all environments and should have been given more time at the Bernabeu.

It means that as things stand there a few top clubs in world football that wouldn’t have Alonso somewhere near the top of their shortlist in a search for a new manager. But not if he failed twice.

It was reported on Monday that Chelsea have ‘made contact’ with Alonso, who’s a ‘leading candidate’ to take over at Stamford Bridge; The Athletic’s David Ornstein claims he’s ‘open to the possibility’.

Chelsea’s BlueCo ownership offer just as many caveats, if not more, for failure as Real Madrid; Iraola will discover that if he’s next to drink from the poisoned Blues chalice.

But while some club owners may be able to look past things not going well at Real Madrid and then Chelsea to focus on the wonders he worked at Leverkusen, others will inevitably believe Alonso doesn’t have the character to succeed at the biggest clubs and is better suited to an underdog looking to challenge and disrupt the elite.

For someone like Liam Rosenior or indeed Enzo Maresca, Chelsea was too good an opportunity to pass up given their lack of experience. For Iraola, it’s a free hit. It wouldn’t damage the reputation of a Jose Mourinho or an Antonio Conte, not that they would accept given the dearth of control they would have.

For Alonso the pros are the same as they are for Iraola – he will have talented young players to work with and the room for improvement is massive. But unlike Iraola, failure for Alonso at Chelsea will be used as evidence of his lack of mettle for top jobs; it’s for that reason that he’s the manager who should absolutely turn it down.