“Nowadays, as I see football, each successful team must be comfortable playing with three systems – at least. They need to adapt, depending on the circumstances. It isn’t about not being loyal to your identity. No, no, no. It is about knowing your strengths and showing your players what you need to do each game to prepare in the right way.”
– Xabi Alonso, November 2014
Sitting in a small room at Bayern Munich’s renowned Säbener Strasse training base, one of the finest midfielders of his generation was explaining his views on football and, inadvertently, showing why he was destined for a career in management.
The new Chelsea manager played in a style that was timeless for Real Sociedad, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern – taking the ball, moving it quickly, keeping his team on the front foot. Twelve years on from our conversation, his views on how the game should be played remain fresh.
A lazy conclusion to draw about Alonso, following his sacking after 233 turbulent days in charge of Real Madrid, would be that managing at the highest level was beyond him, but nothing could be further from the truth. Privately, Florentino Pérez will be anxious he acted with undue haste.
Pérez has blustered of late that he was right to dismiss Alonso, but it is a face-saving exercise, nothing else. It had been the president’s long-held ambition to appoint the Basque, having watched him develop from the time he began coaching Madrid’s Under-14s in 2018.
A quick exit from Madrid is not a stain on any manager’s CV. It was Alonso’s misfortune to be in a dressing room where toxicity festered and ego soared; the petulance of Federico Valverde, Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Jnr – among others – preventing any seeds from being sown.
Players like Federico Valverde (back row centre), Kylian Mbappe (front row right) and Vinicius Jnr (front row left) did not click with Alonso at Real Madrid – M Gracia Jimenez/Getty Images
The fact they did not want to listen to Alonso – a man who ended his playing career with 17 major honours, including the 2010 World Cup, and made 114 appearances for Spain – says more about them than him: what they possess in talent, they lack in basic respect.
As Jürgen Klopp observed: “If Xabi Alonso, who showed for more than two years in Bayer Leverkusen what an extraordinary talent he is as a coach, has to leave Real Madrid only six months later? It shows you that things are not 100 per cent at the club.”
Everyone should know that and everyone will look at Alonso’s body of work in Germany and marvel at the miracle he produced, transforming the club that used to be called “Neverkusen”, owing to their inability to win big matches, into unbeaten double winners.
Alonso transformed Bayer Leverkusen into double winners – Christopher Neundorf/Shutterstock
So how did he do it? The first thing that needed to be done, to stand any hope, was fostering a bond between the group. Leverkusen train on pitches adjacent to their BayArena stadium and, each morning, the full squad had to assemble at 8.30am for breakfast. Alonso wanted inclusivity and “the breakfast club”, up on the third floor overlooking the pitches, was a way of ensuring everyone knew they were in it together.
Another story, from the early days of his reign, came just before the squad reconvened following the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. He had come into work to get things in order and saw a handful of squad members, working their way back from injury out on the pitch. Rather than leave them with the medical team, Alonso got changed, put his trainers on and spent the next hour doing exactly what they were doing.
Alonso fostered an inclusive environment at Leverkusen – Ronald Wittek/Shutterstock
The best way to describe Alonso, the player, was that he was a sponge. He was the only footballer of his generation to work under Pep Guardiola, José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Vicente del Bosque and Rafael Benítez, and he took something from them all.
Guardiola’s fastidious attention to detail, his forensic way of explaining tactics, fascinated him; Benítez’s ability to be a chameleon, to change from game to game depending on the opponents, left a mark, as did Mourinho’s methodology and ability to motivate a squad. Ancelotti and Del Bosque’s man-management, meanwhile, was priceless.
Nothing will be achieved if everyone is not united and Leverkusen’s squad, in which Granit Xhaka was a large influence, never forgot how he made a fuss of third-choice goalkeeper Niklas Lomb during the unbeaten campaign.
Lomb had known he was not going to get much action, but in a Europa League game against Norwegian side Molde, he started in goal and had an influence in the team winning 5-1. Alonso made a point of talking him up afterwards. Such things do not get forgotten in dressing rooms.
Alonso made sure bit-part players like Niklas Lomb were acknowledged – Jorg Schaeler/Getty Images
“We just want to follow our trainer,” said Patrick Shick, the experienced Czech international, who lead Leverkusen’s line. “Everyone is fighting for their place in the starting XI and has a hunger to be successful. We have a really good spirit inside the team. That is so important.”
There is, though, more to winning football games than camaraderie and Alonso, who set up base with his young family in Düsseldorf, had to make Leverkusen understand what he wanted from them and the way he needed his team to play.
Retaining possession was essential, so much so that during training, when his coaches were setting up drills, Alonso ensured that small groups would always have a ball at their feet, so they were developing their touch and almost felt it became second nature.
Players such as Jonathan Tah, who ended up moving to Bayern Munich, Xhaka, Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Nathan Tella, whom he spent big on to sign from Southampton, all developed under him and enjoyed the season of their lives.
Florian Wirtz flourished at Bayer Leverkusen under Alonso – Hesham Elsherif/Getty Images
Perhaps his finest body of work was a 3-0 skewering of Munich, at home in February 2024, when Thomas Tuchel, in the opposing dug-out, had no answer to stopping Leverkusen switching from 5-2-3 out of possession to 3-2-5 when they were attacking; occasionally they would flick to 4-2-3-1.
Watching it play out in front of you, it took you back to that little room in Säbener Strasse when he explained what he wanted from football but, essentially, provided a sneak peek of his coaching manifesto and how the future would look.
His own future is now blue after he agreed a four-year deal to be the new Chelsea manager shortly after the FA Cup final defeat to Manchester City. Plenty thought that it would be red, given his allegiances to Liverpool and the clamour amongst a large swathe of supporters for him to be appointed. It all seemed obvious that he would go there in 2024, when Klopp stepped down, but it was never close.
Alonso is loved by Liverpool fans from his days as a player at Anfield – John Heng/AP
Alonso had given Leverkusen his word that he was not going to dash off after winning the title and was committed to coaching them in the Champions League and, when that became clear, Liverpool had made inroads on appointing Arne Slot.
Reports in Spain at the turn of this year suggested Liverpool had spoken to Madrid to discuss how Alonso had fared but that was not true. Liverpool have not had contact with Alonso at all and have been unyielding in their support of the Dutchman.
Plenty of other clubs, however, would have jumped at the chance of appointing Alonso. If Vincent Kompany had left Bayern for example, Alonso, who speaks fluent German, would have been a certainty to take over at a club where he finished his playing career and was held in the highest esteem by their hierarchy.
But it is the club on the King’s Road who have made him their new king. He’s got the style for that part of town, he carried the swagger. Above all, he’s got the substance, a mind that is constantly whirring about ways to bring the beautiful game to life.
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