I would not have believed you ten years ago if you had told me that Isco Alarcón would wind up where he did this past summer. In what seemed like an instant, Isco—once regarded as the pinnacle of Spanish soccer—went from dominating the game on the biggest platforms to completely vanishing from the global soccer scene. The most peculiar aspect of his sudden demise is that it has barely created any noise.
Isco was just getting back on its feet in the summer of 2023, having struck what must to have been absolute bottom. He had finally washed out at Real Madrid the year before, after years of near-total obscurity following his early fame. He watched as the years on his contract and the remaining portion of his peak dwindled for four seasons, mainly sitting on the bench.

The Malaga-born midfielder chose to make a sort of homecoming after leaving Madrid, signing for Sevilla before the 2022–2023 campaign. Sevilla presented him with the opportunity to go back to his home region of Andalusia as well as the presence of manager Julen Lopetegui, with whom Isco had a deep and lasting trust that had been cruelly lacking during his lost years in Madrid. However, Lopetegui lost his job a few months into the season due to a decline in performance, and the blissful union between Isco and Sevilla’s sporting director ended in controversy before the season was halfway through.
In December, Isco accepted Sevilla’s offer to end his contract. He would remain unrestricted until the conclusion of the 2022–2023 season. The former wonderkid was on the verge of thirty, unattached to a team, and had not performed at his greatest level of soccer in five years going into this season. Regarding his future, it remained uncertain where Isco may play, how he would seem if he did, and if he still desired to play.
However, how did things get to this point, when the greatest talent in Spain had completely disappeared from view and there was no guarantee that he would ever show up again? We have to go back very far to the beginning to find out.
Isco seemed like the most certain thing a decade ago. He had burst into the scene in Málaga, where he played the lead role of a nouveau riche project that was among the hottest on the continent. In 2012, he guided the Boquerones, owned by the Qatari sheikh Abdullah Al Thani, into the Champions League for the first time in the team’s history. Two excruciating goals were given up in stoppage time later, and the Boquerones were two goals away from a spectacular semifinal spot in that competition.

That was the time of the Spanish midfielder, when any club hoping to succeed in the long run nearly always needed a small, lean, lisping playmaker. Isco was the next in line in a tradition that had produced world-class players like Andrés Iniesta, Cesc Fàbregas, David Silva, Santi Cazorla, and Juan Mata.
The 21-year-old Isco resisted the urge to follow his Málaga doyen Manuel Pellegrini at Manchester City, a new nouveau riche organization similar to the one he wanted to leave, when it came time to take the next step in his consecration by leaving Málaga. Rather, he went with the most blue-blooded team of them all, Real Madrid. It was a bold decision. When wearing the heaviest jersey in the sport, no talent is great enough to ensure success for themselves. There are countless instances in history of stars—both emerging and established—collapsing under Real Madrid’s infamous pressure and impatience.
Isco, though, was no ordinary genius. Isco’s uniqueness was immediately apparent during his initial forays onto the pitch with Málaga. His play has always been one of obsession with the ball: obtaining it, defending it, and accompanying it one-on-one on its arduous and perilous journey toward the opponent’s goal. His game has a sort of magnetic quality to it. He can never get enough of the ball, following it wherever it goes, regardless of where he seems to be beginning from. After he gets it, he draws in defense after defense, who attack him in waves, trying to take away the space around him so they can take it away from him.
But Isco rebuffs all attempts at dispossession with the easy grace of an elderly sage in a Shaw Brothers film, batting away attackers like so many flies with the short steps of his powerful, bowed legs, the delicate touches of his light feet, and the keen mind that finds and invents paths to freedom on the fly.

Isco reluctantly releases a pass, which, because of the multitude of bewildered defenders trailing him, nearly invariably sends a teammate into wide open spaces or the center of the penalty area, only when he is completely certain that the ball’s best chance of reaching the goal rests with the feet of someone else. If he manages to beat half of the opposition team off the dribble and get close enough to score, he will then unleash one of his signature wicked shots, which can be either straight little arrows that zip through the narrow spaces between the goalposts’ feet and the keepers’ gloves or arcing balls into the upper corners of the goal frame.
All of this results in a slow, elaborate, tumultuous, and exquisite spectacle that is also rather effective. Because only steak served on the finest silverware keeps the Bernabéu beast happy, his effectiveness is what has kept him in good standing with the club. But you get the impression that it’s the sizzle that really gets Isco going, given his incessant demands for the ball and his opulent interventions when he does, which appear to indicate a profound need for self-expression and public acknowledgment of his talent.
Isco served and sizzled with Real Madrid, at least for a while. Isco was a vital component of the finest team the Champions League has ever seen, the one that captured the big-eared trophy an incredible four times in five years. He received nothing from Real. Even though he made a big splash when he signed with Madrid in 2013, the club added other players of tsunami proportions after he left:

James Rodriguez, Toni Kroos, and Gareth Bale Isco, an attacking midfielder who could play between the lines, faced competition for playing time from two of the most illustrious attacking and midfield lines in sports history: the BBC, which consisted of Benzema, Bale, and Cristiano, and the CMK, which included Casemiro, Modric, and Kroos. Additionally, there were Dani Ceballos, Ángel Di María, Rodríguez, Marco Asensio, Mateo Kovacic, Martin Ødegaard, and Dani Ceballos, all highly respected players who had to fight for playing time in positions similar to Isco’s.
But even with Real Madrid’s squad’s historically unparalleled depth during that time, Isco was still able to establish a substantial role for himself. Both Isco and fellow second-half substitute Marcelo altered the game’s atmosphere, turning what had been a clumsy and stressful encounter into a display in white in the 2014 UCL final—the one that eventually brought the club’s 10th European win, which it had been maniacally chasing for more than a decade. Isco would come off the bench in the 2016 championship game once more.
However, he was in the starting lineup for the 2017 and 2018 editions, starting no less than Gareth Bale on the bench in both cases. But at the moment, that’s who Isco was. Isco never had an easy time with the club; they never gave him a definitive place in their ideal starting lineup, but in the most important games, the tightest situations, and the hardest challenges, Isco always managed to show up, demanding the ball and leading his team to victory.
That stretch between 2017 and 2018 was Isco’s peak. At Madrid, he’d learned how to bring his inner ball-tyrant nature to heel a bit, streamlining his game so that it would better fit as a compliment alongside the superior talents of Ronaldo, Modric, Kroos, and Benzema. In reward, and especially in big games, manager Zinedine Zidane tweaked the 4-3-3 formation in which the CMK and BBC most naturally fit, turning it into a 4-4-2 diamond especially designed to feature Isco in his favorite no. 10 position. Isco would’ve been a locked-in starter on every single team in the world, the one exception being the team he actually played for. A huge part of Madrid’s success at the time was making good use of the depth Isco provided.
During that same stretch, Isco had emerged as the Spain national team’s focal star. Julen Lopetegui was in charge, which reunited Isco with the manager with whom he’d romped to the 2013 U-21 Euros title. It took Lopetegui very little time to replicate his successful strategy with the U-21s by building the senior national team around the now-mature Isco. Spain offered the midfielder what Real Madrid couldn’t: full freedom to grab the wheel, chart the course, and steer the team exactly how and where he wanted. Naturally, Isco took the opportunity with both hands. Isco’s Spain reached its pinnacle in a masterful outing against Italy in a World Cup Qualifier in 2017, where he was in complete and utter control. Each touch, dribble, pass, and goal of his revealed a team shaped in Isco’s own image.

In the summer of 2018, the 26-year-old Isco was on top of the world. Real Madrid had just won its third consecutive Champions League, in which, as mentioned before, Isco had once again fought his way into a position of prominence by season’s end. The national team that belonged to him stood on the precipice of a World Cup that would, for the first time, give him the platform to showcase the full extent of his powers. Zidane had surprised everyone by resigning as Real manager, but right before the World Cup started, news broke that the club had chosen Lopetegui as the Frenchman’s successor. The script seemed pre-written: Lopetegui and Isco would lead Spain to success in the summer, and two would then build on that by bringing the same formula to Madrid, at last granting Isco an unquestioned place near the top of the team’s hierarchy.
However, right as this vision of imminent success started to come into focus, everything fell apart. In a bizarre show of macho stupidity (foreshadowing!), the Spanish soccer federation’s newly elected president, Luis Rubiales, fired Lopetegui days before the World Cup commenced, enraged that the coach had agreed to take the Real Madrid job without kissing Rubiales’s ring first. Shaken and leaderless, Spain suffered an embarrassing loss to Russia in the round of 16.
There was no respite to be found back in Madrid either. Lopetegui’s tenure with the Blancos was brief and humiliating. He lasted just a few months—part of which Isco was unavailable for, having undergone surgery for appendicitis—before a 5-1 loss to Barcelona in an October Clásico saw the club toss the manager out on his ass. Just like that, all the hopes of the Isco and Lopetegui alliance were dashed before it even really began. In the aftermath, Isco had to start back at square one.
From the heights he’d reached coming into the World Cup in the summer of 2018 and the swift and lurid fall of both of his teams thereafter, it’s maybe fitting that the terrible momentum of all of it took down Isco’s career at the same time. Though fit enough to play about a month after surgery, Isco struggled to return to form after recovering from appendicitis. Interim manager Santiago Solari, who replaced Lopetegui, did not count on Isco and gave him scant playing time. Zidane came back as Madrid manager before the 2018-19 season was out, but he too seemed to have lost faith in Isco. That season, Isco played his fewest minutes since coming to Madrid. And things only got worse from there.
From 2018 until his contract expired in 2022, Isco never regained the position he’d earned over the first five years of his time at Real Madrid. The returns of former Isco champions Zidane and, later, Carlo Ancelotti failed to reverse his fortunes. The generational change he potentially could’ve benefitted from never took place; the agelessness of Kroos and Modric, coupled with the precocity of younger midfielders Fede Valverde, Eduardo Camavinga, and Aurélien Tchouaméni, left no gap for Isco to step into. He still got decent minutes as a substitute and rotation player along the forward and midfield lines, but the role as the team’s 12th man, the player too talented to leave off the pitch in the big games even at the expense of bigger names, was never his again.
Isco’s minutes shrank, and his waistline grew (photos of the unflattering fit of his shirts have become something of a cruel meme in recent years). Eventually, fans stopped wondering whether he might return to his old self and instead saw him only as a ballast on the club’s budget that time would hopefully soon excise. He did stick around long enough to win a fifth Champions League with Madrid, when the remaining old guard from the glory years re-established its historic greatness by winning the competition again in 2022. For the entirety of that European campaign, Isco played 97 minutes across three matches. He was an unused substitute in the final.
Finally, the summer of 2022 brought Isco’s time with Real Madrid to a close. Though he’d spent four years in the wilderness, the 30-year-old presumably still had enough tread on his tires to mount a comeback. It was no surprise when he chose the Lopetegui-led Sevilla as the site of his attempted career resurrection. It was a chance for the pair to realize some semblance of the lost promise that died during those hellish months of 2018. But it wasn’t to be.
Sevilla started the season with five losses out of eight matches, and the club’s sporting director, Monchi, fired Lopetegui. In Isco’s telling, Monchi turned on Isco soon after. In a long and revealing recent interview with Marca, Isco accused Monchi of making up lies about him—specifically, that Isco had requested to leave Sevilla once Lopetegui left. Isco went on to say that the club then pressured Isco to cancel his contract with the club. Isco refused; he wanted to stay and play. One day, Isco confronted Monchi about how the club was handling the situation. He called the executive the biggest liar he’d ever met in the sport. Monchi flew off the handle, and according to Isco, he grabbed the player by the throat. Monchi and Isco had to be physically separated. The incident was disturbing enough to convince Isco that he never again wanted to play for the club, and so he soon after agreed to rescind his contract, foregoing the rest of the salary that would’ve been owed to him. Isco told Marca that neither Monchi nor Sevilla ever apologized.
It was December when Isco’s time at Sevilla came to an end. In January, he was on the cusp of a move to Germany, with Union Berlin reaching out to sign him on the last day of the winter transfer window. Some funny business there—Isco said Union twice changed the terms he and the club had agreed to, doing so after Isco had already flown to Berlin and completed a medical—saw that deal fall through. Rather than look to sign elsewhere as a free agent right away, Isco said in the Marca interview that he needed a break. “Mentally, I was not prepared for another move, another project… I felt that I needed to stop, do therapy, organize my mind, organize my life, and organize my thoughts. He hired a psychologist. With help, he got to a better emotional place and once again felt the excitement and hunger to play again. And so, in the summer of 2023, he once again set out to see if he could re-start his stalled career.

That Marca interview he gave this offseason really is eye-opening. In it, he spoke with clarity about what had gone wrong at Real Madrid. The turning point was indeed in 2018: “[A]fter the World Cup,, everything went wrong.” In retrospect, he said he should’ve left back then. But the allure of Madrid and the well-founded trust he had in himself convinced him to continue fighting. “Do you know what happens?” Isco told the interviewer. “You are in Madrid, and you are at the maximum a player can aspire to. You are in the biggest club in history, and you have also had bad moments but in the end, you always managed to overcome… You always ended up playing forty or fifty games.” He figured things would be the same when Lopetegui was fired, but for reasons he said he still doesn’t understand, Solari was dead set against playing him. “And from then on, Isco no longer existed for anyone,” he said.
Isco described himself as “totally demoralized” after Solari froze him out, and while he was optimistic that things would change when Zidane returned at the end of that season, he was already in a bad place both physically and mentally. Coming off that and the World Cup the summer before, “my head and my body couldn’t do it.” He thought he was getting back in form the next season, but then the pandemic hit. He rarely featured in the team after the restart, which he said was mostly his fault. Presumably he was too far gone, too dejected by the prior failed efforts at getting back on track, too distanced from the warmth of the crowd that, at his best, always seemed to fill him with the energy and drive to thrill them with his resplendent abilities. When Ancelotti replaced Zidane and told Isco he was not in the manager’s plans, Isco accepted his fate. He’d have to wait until his contract was up to discover what was left of his talent.
And so that is how Isco Alarcón reached the summer of 2023 as a forgotten player from whom nobody expected anything. It would’ve been a shame, but not at all a shock, had Isco announced his retirement then and there. But Isco used his time away from the game to rediscover his joy for the game and his desire to play it once again.
The most common idea Isco expressed in that Marca interview, given before he’d settled on a team ahead of the current season, was his desire to have fun again. What is he after? “I want to play football, to have fun, to compete, and and to show that I have good years of football left in me. I want to forget the bad experiences I have had and focus on the good ones that are to come.” What is he looking for in a potential new team? “A project in which I can have continuity, a team that wants to play football with an associative, fun style… I am at a point in my career in which, after winning everything, what I want now is to enjoy.” What is his motivation? “The important thing is that I still have the excitement intact. I want to play, to compete, to have fun,, and I look forward to returning.” What are his priorities? “I’m never going to prioritize money; otherwise,, I wouldn’t have gone to Sevilla. I have and have have had many offers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with large amounts, but I want to play, compete,, and have fun.”
If Isco communicated any real sense of worry in the Marca interview, it centered around his concern about making sure the club he chose next would be the right one. “I don’t want to make another false step in my career, which would be difficult to manage, although I think I would overcome it because I am a brave guy and I would do it. But I don’t want to be wrong.” In light of everything he said he was looking for, it made perfect sense when he eventually settled on rejoining a different manager from the halcyon days of his past, this time Manuel Pellegrini.
Manuel Pellegrini is maybe the best in the world today at putting together teams that fit the requirements of the classic no. 10. He’s done so for Juan Román Riquelme at Villarreal, both Santi Cazorla and Isco himself at Málaga, both David Silva and Samir Nasri at Manchester City, and both Nabil Fekir and Sergio Canales at Real Betis. This era has grown increasingly distrustful of the classic no. 10, the little emperors who, from a throne resting just behind the protective shield of a center forward, presided over the field as sovereigns, traversing the full bounds of their kingdom and dictating the whos, whats, whens, and whys. Pellegrini is the rare manager who still indulges in the style and position that the demands of modern soccer have supposedly made obsolete. Unsurprisingly, this has made Pellegrini’s teams often some of the coolest and most fun teams to watch. Maybe more surprisingly, Isco has taken to the little fiefdom Pellegrini has prepared for him with the kind of freshness and proficiency we haven’t seen from him in years.
Isco has started all 12 of Betis’s matches in La Liga so far this season. He has been named the man of the match in eight of those. With Sergio Canales leaving the team over the summer after securing himself a high-paying move to Monterrey in Mexico and with Fekir still recovering from a significant injury suffered last season, Isco has stepped right in and carried the Béticos. Pellegrini’s team overall hasn’t been as good or entertaining this year as in previous seasons, when Betis has found itself pushing for Champions League places, including a joyous Copa del Rey title in 2022. But this team, Isco’s team, has provided plenty of reasons to watch.
With his mind clear, his manager’s faith guaranteed, and the love of the crowd growing, Isco has been on fire so far this season. The magnetism of his game is completely back: he trots the length and width of the pitch to catch the ball, hide it between his legs, skitter with it past the defenders lured by the illusionary promise of taking it from him, and pass or shoot it when the moment calls. Not since Lopetegui’s Spain has Isco been this empowered to go and do what he wants, which is everywhere and everything.
As a concession to the current game’s demands, Isco’s also shown impressive defensive commitment, which was long pointed to as the big flaw that kept him from consolidating a regular starting role for himself in Madrid. And even though Betis as a whole hasn’t yet been great, Isco’s greatness has kept the team in the hunt for European places, where they currently sit sixth in the league table. With Fekir just now getting back to health (on Saturday he played his first minutes since February), Betis will unite Isco with an ideal partner to amplify his game and bring him and the team to new heights—heights few expected to ever see Isco touch again.
Isco has been one of the stand-out performers in La Liga this season, and his journey from nowhere to here makes his one of European soccer’s most legitimately inspirational stories. Here’s a guy who had the world at his feet as a 21-year-old, and over the course of a decade scaled the heavens and tasted immortality but then crashed back to earth and couldn’t get back up. In the face of the most brutal setback yet, rather than call it quits, he took his time, improved his mental health, rediscovered his love for the game, and charged right back into the thick of things. Betis isn’t in line for any of the trophies Isco made a habit of collecting during his time in Madrid, but I’d be surprised if finishing this season the way he’s begun it doesn’t wind up feeling to him like the most rewarding feat of them all.
Plus, there are still new things to win. Isco hasn’t played for Spain since 2019. His form this season has increased the calls for national team manager Luis de la Fuente to bring the Betis man in, and reports say Isco has been included in De la Fuente’s preliminary list ahead of the mid-November international break. Should he continue playing like this all season, there’s a great chance he’ll be in the roster for next summer’s Euros—though, looking at the absurd depth of Spain’s midfield, it will be difficult for him to get much playing time there. Him getting on the roster and earning a starting spot and helping Spain win the Euros might all be a long shot, but if he’s taught us anything at this point, it’s that no one should ever count Isco out of a fight.