EUROPE’S HOTTEST PROPERTY
He’s lifted Leverkusen from drop zone to top and is ready to rain on Harry Kane’s parade. We spent two days with XABI ALONSO to see what all the fuss is about
HE HAS still got it, that much is clear. Wednesday lunchtime, on a training pitch next to Bayer Leverkusen’s stadium, and Xabi Alonso is fizzing balls around with pinpoint accuracy. Alonso was a midfielder who made football look easy, a prince for Liverpool, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Spain. His haul of 17 major trophies, including a World Cup and two Champions Leagues and 114 caps reflected his rare ability. Watching him pass on this drizzly day confirms magic remains in his boots.
The difference between then and now, though, is that Alonso has 20 pairs of eyes studying him, a group that listens to his every word. No wonder. Alonso’s star as a manager is rising, his impact on Leverkusen in a short period of time is nothing short of staggering.
When he was appointed in early October 2022, Leverkusen were in the relegation zone. Today, they proudly sit top of the Bundesliga and are the only team in Europe’s top five leagues with a blemish-free record, their run now 23 matches without defeat. Real Sociedad, Alonso’s first club, were the last team to beat them in a friendly on July 30.
Could they really stop the Bayern Munich juggernaut and wreck Harry Kane’s first season abroad by lifting the Meisterschale?
‘We have got our position but we have this passion, this will, to continue doing the right things,’ Alonso tells Mail Sport. ‘Maybe in the future we can do something nice. We will see. But we don’t look ahead. We go step by step. That is in our DNA, how we are going to work things out.’
WATCHING Alonso work confirms everything his old team-mates told you about what his future would look like. Everyone knew he would become a manager; he was a leader who commanded respect and had a clear idea of how the game should be played. This remains true.
We have come to spend 48 hours in northern Germany, to get an understanding of what he is doing; observing him the day before Leverkusen play Molde in their final Europa League game, you see a man comfortable in his surrounds.
He does not waste a single second of a session. When a drill finishes, Alonso will knock a ball into the group of players, so they are always thinking about having it at their feet. That came naturally to him and he wants them to be similarly comfortable.
‘This is my task, my job, my passion, this is what I am enjoying doing,’ he says. ‘I like to be close to the players, trying new things and making sure they have this commitment. We have to get the message across that each session is important.
‘It means something, the things we are doing are for a reason. We have been working together with most of the guys for one year and two months and the dynamic now is quite good. That is what we have to do, to keep that focus.
‘The message is that we have to be the best version of ourselves, from Monday to Friday, so we are ready for Saturday. I want to be close to them, talking to them, on the pitch and off it. But, at the same time, we can never be too relaxed.’
He will certainly not relax. Club officials describe his attention to detail as obsessive and, while it might sound cliched, Alonso is first in the building each morning and last to leave each night. Long hours are essential.
When he first took the job, the pressure he put himself under was, by his own admission, ‘intense’. His wife, Nagore, stayed in Spain with their three children for the first six weeks and only when they arrived in Germany did he feel balance once more. The family home is now in Dusseldorf.
But during those six weeks he set a tone. Two days before the end of the World Cup break he went into work and saw a handful of injured players doing rehab out on the grass. Rather than leave them alone Alonso got changed, put on his trainers and went and joined them for the next hour.
Another thing he implemented was a ‘breakfast club’. On the third floor of the Bay Arena’s West Tribune, the squad assembles each morning to have breakfast together. The key to success, he knows, is harmony and spirit. To emphasise this, his team selection for the Molde game was significant. He gave thirdchoice goalkeeper Niklas Lomb a rare start, rewarding his attitude. Here was a clear message that everyone has a role to play for him.
‘So far we have been able to find two very important things,’ he says. ‘How we want to play and how we want to compete in terms of football and in terms of our mentality. When we are able to combine those things, we will be in a good mood.’
THE mood in this city, with its population of 160,000, is buoyant. Bundesliga games are sold out and a measure of the team’s popularity is shown by the fact they took 4,000 travelling fans to recent fixtures in Stuttgart and Bremen. Alonso has lit a spark.
But why should this be a surprise? He worked under Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, Rafa Benitez, Carlo Ancelotti and Vicente del Bosque, analysing their methods and understanding what it takes to manage at the highest level.
There will come a point in the future when he will have his pick of the biggest jobs around. With his affinity and connections on Merseyside, plenty will see him as Jurgen Klopp’s heir apparent. Similarly, the feeling in Madrid is that he is destined to work at the Santiago Bernabeu.
But he is not in any rush and why should he be? Contracted to July 2026, Alonso is building an exciting team in Leverkusen, having remodelled it this summer: 19 players were moved out, including Moussa Diaby to Aston Villa for £50million, with eight arriving.
He had a clear plan of what needed to be done and his big additions — Nathan Tella, £20m from Southampton, the Nigeria international Victor Boniface and
Granit Xhaka from Arsenal — have all made a difference. The recruitment has worked.
‘It was fundamental, the decisions that we took,’ says Alonso. ‘We had the idea before the end of last year how we wanted to restructure the team and we have many important players who are doing a lot of good things.’
HOW they did good things against Molde. Tella was superb, benefitting from a touchline tutorial from his manager; Jonas Hofman, another new boy, was excellent, as was Adam Hlozek, who scored twice.
They won 5-1, switching seamlessly through three different systems and were the only team in the Europa League to win all six group games. They reached the semi-finals last season, losing 1-0 to Roma and they are equipped to go deep in the competition again.
Should he become the first Leverkusen manager to win a trophy since 1993, his stock would go through the roof and he is happy to dream but he is also a realist. The hardest part of this journey is still to come.
‘Those who want to be relaxed, get punished immediately as soon as they do that,’ he says. ‘Hopefully we are not that stupid. We cannot take anything for granted. I don’t really care, to be honest, about how many games we keep winning. I don’t care what has happened.
‘I only care about what is coming. My only thoughts now are Eintracht and Bochum. We need to finish this last week with full gas, with full motivation. I’m sure that if we get good results, we will enjoy a much better Christmas. We have to make the last effort.’
It can be guaranteed that they will.