Alonso officially takes over as Real Madrid's coach and vows to follow in the footsteps of Ancelotti

MADRID (AP) — Xabi Alonso officially took over Real Madrid's coaching job on Monday, vowing to follow in the footsteps of Carlo Ancelotti and saying he has “a good feeling” about the team's future under his command.

Madrid announced the hiring of Alonso on Sunday, a day after the club paid tribute to Ancelotti at the team's final Spanish league match of the season at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Ancelotti is taking over the Brazil job after four mostly successful seasons in his second stint with the club.

“I'm here to take over from Carlo Ancelotti, who was my coach and is a great person,” Alonso said. “He is a coach who left his mark on me and had a great influence. Without his guidance, I probably wouldn’t be here. I'll pick up his legacy with pride and honor of now being in the position that Carlo was before, and I hope to live up to the expectations and lead this club to achieve all of its objectives.”

He said he will try to instil his own style at Madrid, but did not give many hints about his tactics. He emphasized the desire to play ambitiously and with a proactive attitude.

“You have to be flexible in soccer today, you have to be dynamic,” Alonso said. “I can move pieces during a game or before a game. I have an idea already of what I’m going to do, but it can change. What I want is for the team to transmit emotion, energy, to show that we want to be ambitious.”

Alonso said it felt good returning home to Madrid, where he won six titles as a player from 2009-2014.

“Without a doubt this is a very special day for me,” Alonso said. ”I'm very happy to be at a place where I feel is my home. I may have been a few years away, but the link with Real Madrid and Madrid fans has always existed."

The ceremony to introduce Alonso began with the showing of a video with some of Alonso's highlights as a player for Madrid, Spain and other clubs where he played as a midfielder. There were also highlights of his stints as a coach at Madrid's youth squads, Real Sociedad's “B” team and with Bayer Leverkusen, which he left after this season.

The 43-year-old Alonso, who arrives on a contract until June 2028, watched the video alongside his wife and other invitees.

“Today is a very special day for all of us, it's the start of a new phase," Madrid president Florentino Pérez said. ”Because we have a new coach who already is one of the best in the world and who represents the values of Real Madrid because he knows exactly what this shield and this shirt means."

Alonso is returning to Real Madrid to take over a club that failed to meet expectations this season. It won the UEFA Super Cup title but mostly struggled after that, failing to lift another trophy and losing all four “clásico” matches against rival Barcelona, which clinched a league and cup double.

“We have a great team, with fantastic players,” Alonso said. “I’m convinced that I can achieve important things, worthy of Real Madrid. I want to inspire the fans, make them proud of the team that they see on the field. I have a good feeling that we can start something great.”

He won't have a lot of time to get the team prepared, though, as the Club World Cup begins in June.

"These were the circumstances and I see it as an opportunity,” Alonso said. “It will help expedite some of the processes as we get to know each other, and it will also give us an opportunity to win a title. It could be a great start.”

Alonso helped Madrid win the Spanish league in 2012 and the 2014 Champions League before leaving to help Bayern Munich win three Bundesliga titles.

As a coach, Alonso led Leverkusen to an unprecedented German league and cup double last year in his first full season after taking over the team when it was in the Bundesliga’s relegation zone the season before.

His team became the first to complete a whole Bundesliga campaign unbeaten. Leverkusen’s only defeat in 2023-24 was to Atalanta in the Europa League final, and it bounced back three days later by winning the 2024 German Cup.

“I feel that this was the right moment (to come to Madrid), for both sides,” Alonso said. “I felt it since yesterday, seeing the fans excited and believing. That gives me energy.”

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Former footballer Xavi Alonso speaks to reporters during his presentation as Real Madrid's new coach at the Club's headquarters in Madrid on Monday 26 May 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Former footballer Xavi Alonso speaks to reporters during his presentation as Real Madrid's new coach at the Club's headquarters in Madrid on Monday 26 May 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Former footballer Xavi Alonso speaks to reporters during his presentation as Real Madrid's new coach at the Club's headquarters in Madrid on Monday 26 May 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Former footballer Xavi Alonso arrives for a press conference during his presentation as Real Madrid's new coach at the Club's headquarters in Madrid on Monday 26 May 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Former footballer Xavi Alonso speaks to reporters during his presentation as Real Madrid's new coach at the Club's headquarters in Madrid on Monday 26 May 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — More than two dozen passengers from at least 12 different countries left a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak on April 24 without contact tracing, nearly two weeks after the first passenger died on board, the ship operator and Dutch officials said Thursday.

The news raised concerns that the virus could spread as travelers returned home, although experts say the risk to the wider public is considered low as hantavirus isn't easily transmitted between people.

Even so, the Dutch health ministry said a woman who was not on the ship was being tested for hantavirus and being kept in an isolated ward in an Amsterdam hospital after showing symptoms. The woman was part of a flight crew and had contact with an infected passenger on the plane, it said.

If the woman tests positive, she could be the first known person not on the MV Hondius to become infected in the outbreak.

Health authorities were monitoring people or trying to trace others who may have come into contact with cruise passengers on at least four continents.

Three cruise ship passengers have died in the outbreak, and several others are sick.

Three people, including the ship’s doctor, were evacuated Wednesday while the ship was near the West African island country of Cape Verde and taken to specialized hospitals in Europe for treatment.

The Netherlands-based cruise ship company had previously said the body of the Dutch man who was the first to die on board on April 11 was taken off the ship on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena on April 24, when his wife also disembarked. She then flew to South Africa a day later and died there.

The company said Thursday 29 passengers left the vessel at St. Helena, while the Dutch Foreign Ministry put the number at about 40. The company had not previously acknowledged that dozens more people left the ship at that time.

The first confirmed case of hantavirus in a passenger on the ship was only on May 2, the World Health Organization has previously said. That was in a British man evacuated from the ship to South Africa from Ascension Island three days after the St. Helena stop. He was tested in South Africa and is in intensive care there.

The people who left the ship at St. Helena to return to their home countries were of at least 12 different nationalities, Oceanwide Expeditions said. It said there were also two people whose nationalities were unknown.

Hantavirus usually spreads by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and in rare cases can be transmitted from person to person, according to the World Health Organization, whose top epidemic expert said the risk to the public is low.

Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.

It emerged Wednesday that a man tested positive for hantavirus in Switzerland after he also disembarked at St. Helena and flew home, though his precise movements aren’t clear.

On Thursday, Singaporean health authorities said they were monitoring two men who got off the ship at St. Helena and flew to South Africa and then home. The two elderly men, who arrived in Singapore at different times, were being tested for hantavirus and were isolated at the country's National Center for Infectious Diseases, officials said.

One had a runny nose and the other had no symptoms, Singapore's Communicable Diseases Agency said.

British health officials say two people who were passengers aboard the ship but flew home midway through the journey are self-isolating but do not have symptoms of illness. The U.K. Health Security Agency said “a small number” of contacts of the two are also self-isolating but are not showing any symptoms. Other contacts are being traced.

Authorities in St. Helena, the remote, volcanic British territory in the South Atlantic where passengers got off, said they were monitoring a small number of people who were considered “higher risk contacts.” Those higher risk contacts were being told to isolate for 45 days, the St. Helena government said.

Meanwhile, the vessel is now sailing to Spain’s Canary Islands, a voyage that is expected take three or four days, with more than 140 passengers and crew members still on board.

The body of the third fatality, a German woman, is also still on board the ship after she died on May 2.

Authorities in South Africa are also trying to trace contacts of any passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly on an April 25 flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, the day after passengers disembarked there.

The Dutch woman from the cruise ship who later died in South Africa took that flight, officials have said. It's not known how many other cruise passengers also were among the 88 people on it, but flights from St. Helena go to South Africa and are rare, normally once a week.

Tests have confirmed that at least five people who were on the ship were infected with a hantavirus found in South America, called the Andes virus. It can cause a severe and often fatal lung disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

Argentina’s health ministry said there were 28 deaths from hantavirus last year, up from an average mortality rate of 15 in the five years before that. Nearly a third of cases last year were fatal, it said.

The Andes strain is the only hantavirus known to spread from human to human.

The ship departed from Argentina and investigations into the source of the outbreak are focusing on that country. The Dutch couple, the first passengers to fall sick, traveled there and elsewhere in South America before boarding the ship, according to WHO.

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa. AP writer Jill Lawless, in London, contributed.

A view of the m/v Hondius Cruise ship anchored at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Monday, May 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Arilson Almeida)

Health workers get off the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, a cruise ship carrying nearly 150 people as it remains off Cape Verde on Monday, May 4, 2026 after three passengers died and several others fell seriously ill in a suspected hantavirus outbreak. (Qasem Elhato via AP)

Medical personnel in hazmat suits wait for patients, evacuated from the MV Hondius cruise ship with suspected hantavirus infection, at Schiphol airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

The MV Hondius cruise ship departs the port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)