Photo: Giovanni Batista Rodriguez / CC BY-SA 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons
Xabi Alonso has called on his Chelsea squad to make 'compulsory and mandatory' sacrifices as the club prepares for its Premier League return. The Spaniard officially took charge at the start of July and has spent two and a half weeks working with the squad at Cobham.
Chelsea departed for Sydney, Australia on Friday to begin a two-week pre-season tour. The schedule also includes stops in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Malaysia, with five matches planned in total.
The first fixture is against A-League side Western Sydney Wanderers on Tuesday. Alonso will use the game as an early measure of his side's development.
'We want to build a competitive team and we are in that process,' Alonso said. 'We have great quality, great talent, and we need to know what it takes to compete in the Premier League.'
'We need to make the sacrifices that are compulsory and mandatory in each Premier League game,' he added. 'To win each game, it's tough. We need to prepare for that and we are using this time.'
Alonso won 14 club trophies as a player, including two Champions League titles. He also won the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2012 UEFA European Championship with Spain.
As a manager, he led Bayer Leverkusen to their first-ever Bundesliga title in 2024 without losing a single league match, then added the DFB-Pokal to complete a domestic double.