{"id":10117,"date":"2026-05-18T14:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T14:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=10117"},"modified":"2026-05-18T14:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T14:04:15","slug":"alonso-takes-over-as-chelsea-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=10117","title":{"rendered":"Alonso takes over as Chelsea manager"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Chelsea have appointed former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso as their manager.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 44-year-old Spaniard will officially take over in July and has signed a four-year contract.<\/p>\n<p>Fulham\u2019s Marco Silva was <span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>among those to have been considered by Chelsea<\/strong><\/span>but Alonso was the first choice.<\/p>\n<p>The former Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen boss, 44, succeeds Liam Rosenior, who was <span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>sacked last month.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Interim manager Calum McFarlane has been in temporary charge, overseeing Saturday\u2019s 1-0 <span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>FA Cup final defeat against Manchester City at Wembley.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Alonso has been out of work since leaving Real Madrid in January after less than eight months in charge at the Bernabeu.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to his spell in Spain, he enjoyed a stunning stint in Germany, leading Leverkusen to their first-ever Bundesliga title \u2014 secured without losing a single game\u2014as well as the German Cup during the 2023-24 campaign.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: #1b4f9c; color: white; border-radius: 12px; padding: 16px; display: flex; align-items: center; gap: 12px; font-family: sans-serif; box-shadow: 0 2px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.1); flex-wrap: nowrap;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 28px; height: 28px; flex-shrink: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/6\/6b\/WhatsApp.svg\" alt=\"WhatsApp\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Get the latest direct to your phone \u2013 follow West London Sport\u2019s WhatsApp channel<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- \/.commentwrap --><\/p>\n<p><!-- \/themify_builder_content --><\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chelsea have appointed former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso as their manager. The 44-year-old Spaniard will&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}