On May 18, the latest report from The Athletic UK's Chelsea and team reporter team stated that Xavi Alonso's long-term assistant coach is Sebastian Parrilla, and he is one of the four members of the Real Madrid coaching staff who will follow Xabi Alonso to join Chelsea.
The assistant coaches are Alberto Encinas and Benat Labayan, as well as the fitness coach Ismael Carmenfort Lopez, who are also expected to follow Alonso to Stamford Bridge.
Callum McFarlane, who serves as interim head coach, will continue to stay at the club and become a member of the new head coach's coaching team.
Expected to remain under Alonso are Chelsea set-piece coach Bernardo Cueva and goalkeeper coach Ben Roberts.
After Alonso took office last summer, he launched a large-scale personnel adjustment for the Real Madrid coaching staff. He still has the possibility of bringing more coaches to Chelsea in the future.
The 44-year-old coach was officially appointed as Chelsea head coach on Sunday. And the two parties also signed a four-year contract. This is his return to coaching after being fired by Real Madrid in January this year. All four coaches left Real Madrid together with Alonso at the beginning of this year.
The former midfielder has cooperated with Parrilla from the moment he started his coaching career, which can be traced back to 2018, when they coached Real Madrid's U14 team together.
Parrilla worked in the Real Madrid youth academy for twenty years before joining the Real Sociedad B team coached by Alonso in 2019, and then joined Bayer Leverkusen, where he led the team to win the first Bundesliga title in team history with an unbeaten record in the 2023-24 season.
The Athletic reported in June that Alonso relied specifically on Parrilla for coaching on defense and set-piece tactics.
Encinas, who coached Barcelona's La Masia youth academy, first worked with Alonso during the successful cooperation at Bayer Leverkusen, and then brought Alonso to Real Madrid.
Labain worked for Real Madrid's youth team from 2011 to 2014, before joining Real Madrid with Alonso and returning to the club where he had previously worked.
As a video analyst and assistant coach, he has worked at Atletico Madrid, Leeds United, Real Sociedad, Albacra, Real Zaragoza, and in 2023 coached the Japanese team Tokushima Eddy.
At first, Carmen Ford-Lopez worked with Alonso at Leverkusen, and later joined Real Madrid and served as the club's director of physical training. He mainly focuses on the playing style of the team led by Alonso, formulates training plans for the players, and arranges and implements training matters on the field. Before that, he spent eight years working in the youth training camp of La Masia, and then successively coached New York City and the Danish national team.
When he joined Chelsea in the winter of the 2024-2025 season, McFarland left Southampton to serve as Chelsea's U21 head coach. He was 40 years old. After the departure of Enzo Maresca and Liam Rossinier, he served as the interim head coach twice.