How Thomas Tuchel decision has given Chelsea and Xabi Alonso an early boost | OneFootball

New manager’s pre-season preparations will include plenty of first-team stars

Yet Alonso’s hire has been met with the appropriate level of acclaim to match his lofty stature within the sport both as a player and now manager.

Calmer waters are expected once he officially boards on July 1, and the level of player available to him in those early weeks and months are a further boost to the Spaniard.

They were not the only Chelsea players overlooked. Tuchel also opted against picking centre-backs Levi Colwill and Trevoh Chalobah, Belgium left out Romeo Lavia, France omitted Wesley Fofana and Argentina decided against Alejandro Garnacho.

For the players in question whose World Cup dreams were ended — or, at the very least, pushed back four years — it will have been devastating news to receive. For Chelsea and Alonso, however, not quite the same crushing blow.

The various snubs leave Chelsea’s incoming manager able to call on some of the club’s leading players for the full pre-season campaign, and that can only be seen as a welcome development for a manager hoping to hit the ground running.

Chelsea’s pre-season takes them to Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia this summer but their opening game only kicks off on July 28, nine days after the World Cup final.

That means Palmer and Joao Pedro, players who could really do with a break, can enjoy a prolonged rest while the World Cup is playing out in North America, putting their feet up by the poolside ahead of a pre-season where Alonso will now get to work closely alongside them and impart his wisdom. He would not have been afforded the opportunity if they had been crossing the pond to instead represent their countries.

Joao Pedro and Cole Palmer in training

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The 2024-25 season was a 51-week, 65-game slog for Chelsea, owing to their participation in the Conference League (which they won) and then straight into the Club World Cup (which they also won). The squad received just three weeks off before a rushed 13-day pre-season led them into last campaign. Perhaps it was no wonder they were so regularly outrun by their opponents and faltered throughout a miserable season.

You get the sense Palmer in particular, simply not himself this term, could hugely benefit from this reset. A rest, at last, for a player who seems to have lost his fifth and sixth gear.

It may be bookended by matches against Western Sydney Wanderers and Johor Darul Ta'zim, but clashes with Tottenham, Juventus and AC Milan should provide meaningful challenges in the infancy of Alonso’s reign. The closer his starting lineups in those games are to his idea of a Chelsea team at full strength, the more useful an experiment each outing will be.

Working closely with players who Chelsea view as part of their long-term future, Alonso will learn an awful lot from those first few weeks, testing different formations, trialling different personnel, tweaking tactics in-game, and reflecting with his analysts on what works and what does not — and, crucially, why.

A productive pre-season full of learnings would help Chelsea pick up steam ahead of the early months of Alonso’s first season. Following a campaign of unhelpful upheaval, midtable obscurity and European humiliation, the club know it is time to deliver.