The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FFC podcast with me, Ayo Akimu Lari.

Jabbi Alonzo has been announced as Chelsea's next manager.

As their campaign peters out, is he the man to reignite them next season?

All right, in with us for this one.

On The Athletic, we've got James Horncastle.

We've also got a Chelsea correspondent, Liam Toomey, as well.

So on Saturday, the athletics David Ornstein exclusively revealed that Jabby Alonzo had agreed to become Chelsea's next permanent manager. I mean, considering the COP exit, Liam,

considering the chat we've had about this over the last couple of weeks, surely a little bit

of good news for Chelsea fans, finally. Yeah, and delivered a couple of hours after FA Cup final

defeat. So quite the consolation prize. I think Chelsea have reason to hope that

it will be an awful lot more than that in the next couple of years. This is a real coup. There's

no understating that. I think, you know, Jabby Alonzo is a year removed from getting the Real Madrid

job on merit as perhaps the most coveted young coach

in European football. And now Chelsea have managed to land him from what you would have to say on

the pitch is a position of weakness. They are at a low ebb this season. And so the fact that they've

managed to convince him to come in and, you know, the framework of the arrangement that he will have with the club, which we've had some information on, but we can only really see with time, will be critical to determining how successful this is.

Yeah, it's so interesting when we talk about Jabby Alonzo because obviously his last tenure was at Real Madrid, James, and many have said perhaps it lowered his stock in many respects, but when you now look at what's happening at Real Madrid, it's fair to say that potentially what happened there wasn't fully his fault, was it?

Yeah, it's been a kind of Anus Horribalis really for Real Madrid, you know, second year in a

row without winning any silverware.

Yeah, Barsa securing the title in El Classico.

And look, I think it was, it was difficult for Chabri Olaunce on a number of levels.

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