Fulham finalising deal to appoint Alvaro Arbeloa as head coach on three-year deal
Fulham are in the process of finalising a deal to appoint Alvaro Arbeloa as the club’s new head coach on a three-year deal.
Club sources insist the process of finding a successor to Marco Silva remains ongoing and comments made last week by Fulham vice chairman and director of football operations Tony Khan that there were two leading candidates for the role remain valid.
The club’s talks with Arbeloa have covered a range of topics including the Spaniard’s backroom staff and first-team squad planning.
The 43-year-old left his position at Real Madrid at the end of the season after a four-month spell in charge.
The Athletic reported on June 10 that the Premier League side had held talks with the former defender, who guided Madrid to last season’s Champions League quarter-final stage, over a move to Craven Cottage.
The west London side have been searching for a head coach since Silva exited Craven Cottage earlier this month, bringing an end to five years in the role. He has since been confirmed as Jose Mourinho’s replacement at Benfica.
Mourinho has replaced Arbeloa as Madrid’s head coach, after the former defender spent the second half of last season in the role.
Arbeloa had taken over from Xabi Alonso in January, with Madrid trailing Barcelona by four points in La Liga. By the end of the season, however, the gap had increased to eight points.
The Spanish coach oversaw a shock Copa del Rey defeat at the last-16 stage to second division side Albacete and, despite eliminating Benfica and then Manchester City from the Champions League, Madrid were eliminated by Bayern Munich at the quarter-final stage.
Fulham finished 11th for the second time running under Silva in the 2025-26 Premier League. The Portuguese was appointed by the west London club in 2021 and guided Fulham to the Championship title in his first term in charge before a period of consolidation in the top flight.
Should the deal be completed, Arbeloa will face his Madrid predecessor Alonso in Fulham’s first Premier League game of the season, against Chelsea on August 24.
Arbeloa sought stability after turbulent Madrid stint
Analysis by The Athletic’s Colin Millar
Arbeloa oversaw four months of chaos and division in Madrid, but that environment is not a reflection of his coaching skills.
Promoted from the club’s third-division reserve team in January with just six months’ coaching experience in senior football, the former defender was always a short-term club solution following Alonso’s exit. Alonso left behind a divided and fractured dressing room, which no temporary appointment could ever command authority upon.
Madrid’s results under Alonso clouded the reality, there were plenty of scratchy league victories — won more via individualism rather than any inherent tactical structure — that masked the reality. Champions League games were chaotic, with tame losses to Liverpool and Manchester City in the league phase an indicator of how far this side were from Europe’s elite.
Arbeloa had a ropey start but it should not be discounted that he won both play-off ties against Benfica and then, much more impressively, did the same against City with an emphatic 5-1 aggregate victory. Those victories came without Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe, with a glimpse that Arbeloa could formulate a game-plan with better team balance and, in truth, fewer egos.
Arbeloa was handed plenty of headaches in his short Madrid tenure (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
The consensus in the Spanish capital was that Arbeloa, while not yet cut out to coach a club of Madrid’s magnitude, was not responsible for the chaos that engulfed the club. He cannot be fully removed from responsibility for the tensions within the dressing room, such a culture had set long before his arrival.
A natural step in Arbeloa’s coaching career may have been to join a top-flight Spanish club without title ambitions, but few leave a Clasico side to make that step. The contemporary glamour and finances of the Premier League were always going to be a more attractive proposal.
It should not be forgotten that Silva’s credentials were questioned before his move to Craven Cottage, but he proved the doubters wrong in an environment of relative calm and stability. After four months at the world’s most turbulent club, that is exactly what Arbeloa needed.