Xabi Alonso leads Leverkusen to a historic feat and becomes Europe’s new darling – 03/03/2024 – Sport

Current coach of Celta de Vigo, Spaniard Rafa Benítez is always proud of the 2005 Champions League title, marked by the historic reaction against Liverpool, in Istanbul, on May 25 of that year.

After conceding three goals from Milan in the first half, the English club managed an unlikely script: they reacted within 15 minutes, tying the match that they would later win on penalties. The last goal was a penalty converted by Xabi Alonso.

Forty-two days earlier, however, Alonso was the pillar of a much less well-known game, but just as fundamental: a goalless draw with Juventus, in Turin, which guaranteed the team’s classification among the competition’s top four.

The Spanish midfielder had just returned after a three-month injury, but responded to the commander’s request to play as a sacrifice, even with little mobility. “Stand in the middle,” he said.

“Tactically we did everything very well, but the key was to recover Xabi quickly to ensure he could play,” Benítez told The Guardian.

“He was intelligent and observant. When you explain things to some players, you have to repeat them. Xabi learned quickly”, he adds.

A vital piece on that day and in the campaign that culminated in the historic achievement, Alonso is now one of the hottest coaches in Europe, a kind of “new darling”.

At 42 years old, the former Basque midfielder from Tolosa, revealed by Real Sociedad, is now shining in his second season for Bayer Leverkusen.

The team doesn’t know what it’s like to lose. There are 19 wins and four draws in 23 matches played in the Bundesliga, an entire round without being defeated, as well as a seven-point difference in the lead over Bayern Munich.

“I followed his training closely. It’s participatory work, for the athlete to look at the coach, see what he did and what is possible to do. The athlete has much more awareness. The work is more dynamic, easy to assimilate. I would say that This is one of the fundamental points”, he tells Sheet former striker Paulo Sérgio, ambassador of the competition and representative of the German club.

Viral videos are not uncommon on social media in which Xabi Alonso throws or passes the ball during activities with the same ease as in his playing days.

“I’m still as slow as I was at 20 years old,” joked Alonso in his last year as a professional, in 2017, for Bayern Munich.

His entry into the coaching market was almost by chance. Less than a year after hanging up his boots, he decided to start the UEFA coaching course as a way of forgetting a series of accusations of tax evasion by the Spanish Tax Authority.

He was cleared and the course took the former midfielder back to his old home, Real Sociedad, to work for the B team.

It spent three seasons, from 2019 to 2022, with access to the Spanish second division in 2021 – a feat that had not occurred in 50 years. His arrival at Leverkusen was a bold decision by the club’s CEO, Spaniard Fernando Carro, who has been in the role since 2018.

The announcement of a coach who had never led a team in top-shelf competitions was made on October 5, 2022 and seemed like the final straw for a team that occupied second place, with just five points added, in addition to carrying the weight of an early elimination in the German Cup for a third division team.

He managed to lead the team from 17th to sixth place, qualifying for the Europa League. This season, with the principle of work, he imposed an intense style that impacts the country.

“Xabi has always been a guy with a lot of personality, being very involved in day-to-day work, but I couldn’t read beforehand that he would become a coach. We lived at Bayern, when I worked for the club, and I see him as even more intense now. More ready”, explains Paulo Sérgio, former player at the club between 1993 and 1997.

Alonso uses the 3-5-2 system as the pillar of his work, which also varies to 5-4-1, depending on the need to have the wingers deeper in some matches.

The option for three defenders, which generally includes Odilon Kossounou, Jonathan Tah and Edmond Tapsoba, is considered the safest in the competition. He conceded 16 goals in 23 matches, an average of less than one per game. The second best, Bayern, took 28 even with considerably more expensive players.

The team’s engine is in the midfield led by German number 10 Florian Wirtz, 20 years old. Considered ineffective since arriving at Cologne, he became the main technical reference in the coach’s scheme. There are eight goals and 16 assists.

“Wirtz stands out because he fits in with the coach. Everyone at the club says he’s another player since his arrival. There’s no big name, it’s a strong team”, says the four-time champion with the Brazilian national team.

The intense search for always stealing the ball in the attacking field adopted by the coach also boosted names like Jeremie Frimpong, used as a type of winger previously. He won the right wing role.

“The job he’s doing is fantastic. Only undefeated team, fighting with Bayern. Now it’s the most important part of the season,” said Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola, Alonso’s former coach at Bayern.

In fact, the journey towards the title is still arduous. There will be thirteen more rounds, 39 points up for grabs, to try to consolidate an unprecedented title in history. Germany’s biggest club says it wants to count on him for next season.

“He told me that it was too early, that he had to accumulate more experience, that’s what I really admired about him”, said sporting director Max Eberl at a recent press conference, remembering when he tried to sign him during his time at Borussia Mönchengladbach.

“No conclusions can be drawn between this [proposta quando estava no Borussia Mönchengladbach] and the current moment”, he added, leaving the possibility open.

Last season, Borussia Dortmund had everything it needed to overthrow Bayern’s long hegemony. In the final round, however, the team only drew with Mainz at home and saw their rival overtake them.

Bayer has more controlled expectations. In addition to never having won a trophy of this size, the team is still trying to improve the structure – it trains on one of the three fields attached to the BayArena.

Multi-champion as a player for Real Madrid and the Spanish national team, he hopes to continue surprising and, who knows, move from promise to reality on the market.