If I might don my tinfoil cap and look a little deeper... the president of Santander who liked racing is no longer the president of Santander. If their contract with Ferrari is up, they might be looking to get out of F1, or at least take a step back from making Alonso the highest paid 'pay driver' of all time.
I can't imagine that Ferrari would ax Alonso over money (I can't imagine many drivers who can bring in an amount that replaces Santander, much less drivers of Alonso's skill and effort), so while I think that Alonso's comments have as much to do with Santander as anything, I don't really think that Ferrari has a replacement lined up.
If Alonso is out, I would expect that Ferrari is going to rebuild their entire programme, and that's bad news for Kimi too.