When Álvaro Arbeloa was promoted from Real Madrid Castilla, who at the time were fourth in the Primera RFEF group, he had already created a footballing identity of teams with personality and that they wanted to dominate. However, in the first team, Arbeloa says he couldn't be himself. As he himself said: "I had to be the coach I had to be." Therefore, his time as head coach at Real Madrid may not be a true benchmark for Fulham.
At Castilla, his team was built around what he calls offensive joy - possession of the ball and pressure without the ball were the two pillars. Arbeloa was always willing to be more direct when a game required it. In theory, it was a 4-3-3; in practice, one of the midfielders advanced almost like a number 10, changing the shape to a 4-2-3-1 with a clear reference point in front, with the lateral areas being extremely important. One thing was non-negotiable: intensity.
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Arbeloa's defensive model is based on incessant pressing - this was not a team that wanted to sit back and defend their own box, regardless of the changes occurring around them. Much of this reasoning has roots in the locker rooms in which he played. At Liverpool, Rafa Benitez left him the example of a coach obsessed with improving individual players, constantly talking to them and correcting them. Back at Real Madrid in 2009, Manuel Pellegrini showed him a coach who loved speed in the game, with the wings left free to be exploited.
From José Mourinho, who took charge at the Bernabéu during his playing days, Arbeloa highlights how he led and demanded maximum effort every day, a meticulously prepared coach whose training was entirely built around his game model. Carlo Ancelotti and Vicente del Bosque, the latter from his time with the Spanish national team, taught him something different again - that tactics alone are not enough. For Arbeloa, a coach who cannot manage the group is "doomed to fail" - no matter how good his ideas are on the field.