Xabi Alonso is a perfectionist. Even the current record series of 24 competitive games without defeat from the start only satisfies the Bayer Leverkusen coach to a limited extent. “He’s just hungry for success and perfection,” says his new team leader Granit Xhaka.
After last Thursday’s 5-1 win in the Europa League against Molde FK, Alonso replied to the question whether the goal conceded bothered him: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course. I would have preferred 5-0.” After the 3-0 win against Eintracht Frankfurt three days later, he would have liked more goals. “We always want more.”
Sports director Simon Rolfes has to laugh at first when he is asked whether his coach is really never satisfied. “He’s happy after the game,” said Rolfes with a smile: “But you always have to be awake during the game.” Being awake, greedy, always wanting more – that’s how Xabi Alonso became world champion, twice European champion and twice Champions League winner.
Carro: “Xabi knows what a cabin needs”
With Bayer he is already confirmed as Christmas champion before the last game of the year against VfL Bochum on Wednesday (8.30 p.m./Sky). “Especially with Bayer Leverkusen, we have faced an opponent who has to be taken very seriously,” said Bayern Munich’s honorary president Uli Hoeneß, referring to the fight for the championship on Servus TV. As one of three Bundesliga teams in the quarter-finals, the Werkself are also clear favorites in the DFB Cup. In the Europa League, Leverkusen is also one of the title candidates as the only club with only victories in the preliminary round.
Alonso gets his topics across so well as a coach because he doesn’t do it with the doggedness of Oliver Kahn, but with the aura of a man of the world and with the necessary portion of looseness. In this way he has formed a team at Bayer that follows him unconditionally. “Xabi knows what a dressing room needs. The players listen to him,” said club boss Fernando Carro. “He knows exactly how to deal with the players, when to criticize, when to praise,” explained Xhaka.
Praise from the players
And it’s not just because things work that Alonso spreads the fun of the game. “You can tell that the team enjoys playing football. No matter who comes in,” said Rolfes. And that is perhaps the even bigger secret of Leverkusen football, which is currently enrapturing the whole of football Germany. And while football aesthetes delight in the technical masterpieces of Florian Wirtz and Co., the protagonists do not see the final secret of Leverkusen’s soaring heights in the spectacular. Quite the opposite.
“Our strength is the simple game,” said Xhaka: “A lot of movement without the ball, high pressing, giving the opponent almost no room to breathe.” National player Jonas Hofmann also praises his coach for “many simple but effective things. And that’s what counts in football.” It’s “about the little details that turn a good midfielder into a top midfielder,” said Xhaka: “It’s incredibly enriching to have a coach like that.”
That’s what Thomas Tuchel, coach of the series champions and currently their first rival FC Bayern, likes to believe. The Bayern coach explained that he “learned a lot from watching Xabi Alonso play football.” Because the complicated becomes simple. Yes, Xhaka also made that clear: “It looks easier than it is.” Otherwise anyone could do it.