Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso has declared himself over the wounds of his Real Madrid spell, insisting he is buzzing to get his new project with the Blues under way.
The Spaniard opened last season in charge at Real Madrid, only to be dismissed midway through the campaign after the Spanish Super Cup defeat to Barcelona.
Chelsea confirmed his appointment as manager from next season, following a run of stumbles that left the Blues tenth in the Premier League.
Speaking at Chelsea's pre-season training camp, Alonso said: "Fortunately, there are not many scars in my professional career."
On the Real Madrid experience, as reported by English newspaper "The Sun", he added: "Well, I got a scar. Now it has healed, and I am now extremely excited and determined to enjoy this next step as I did when I started in Madrid. But you have to move forward."
He continued: "Looking back, I take advantage of the positives and of the things that did not work. I was very critical of myself, thinking about what I could have done better, because it certainly did not go as expected. But one moves forward to other things."
He went on: "There are many experiences, and the adaptation I had to make, some things that worked and some things that did not work in terms of the game, and in terms of managing the players. It is a mix of everything."
A midfielder with real vision, Alonso played under some of the game's great coaches and soaked up their expertise, from Carlo Ancelotti and Jose Mourinho to Pep Guardiola and Rafael Benitez.
It was under Guardiola at Bayern Munich, in the twilight of his playing career, that Alonso began to take a real interest in the legendary coach and pepper him with questions. "We were very close. I was very curious," he said.
He noted: "I was at that moment in my professional career where I could go to his office, 'Pep, why is this happening? What is the game plan?' Perhaps when I was twenty years old, I did not have that confidence to go to the manager's office to ask these questions."
He added: "But at that moment, and because of the confidence, I needed to do it, and I wanted to do it."
That grounding, allied to his rapid early success in the dugout, convinced Chelsea he was the man to revive the team after a turbulent season.
He said: "A lot of it had to come from here, and from here too. It has to come from the heart."
He added: "I saw that the timing was right from the club's point of view, and right for me too, it is a good opportunity. It is a team that played very well recently, and the situation was not as bad as it appeared at the end of last season."
He continued: "There is great potential for improvement, and let us see how much time that will take. I felt that I had the chance to enjoy being a manager."
His appointment was quickly followed by deals for veterans Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson, the latter a Premier League and Champions League winner with Liverpool.
He said: "You need the right balance between personalities and stages of maturity, from the early twenties to the early thirties and in between, players at different stages of their professional careers."
He added: "There is no formula for that, but there is a feeling for it."
He concluded: "For me, this is no less important than tactics. First, team spirit. Then comes playing good football. Then comes winning matches."