After Jurgen Klopp announced his intention to leave Liverpool at the end of the 2023/24 season, attention immediately turned to who could replace him in the Anfield hotseat.
Sporting CP’s Ruben Amorim has been discussed, as has footballing icon Zinedine Zidane, but Liverpool fans (and probably the club itself too) only have eyes for one manager: Bayer Leverkusen’s Xabi Alonso.
The ex-Liverpool midfielder has propelled Leverkusen to the top of the Bundesliga table this season and in with a genuine chance of winning their first league title ever (yes, ever).
Here’s everything Liverpool fans learned from Leverkusen’s most recent Bundesliga game.
The biggest test of Alonso’s managerial career thus far, and it’s fair to say that he passed with flying colours.
Alonso’s side went into Saturday’s game with a narrow two-point lead atop the table, burdened with decades of Bundesliga failures (Leverkusen have never won the league, finishing second on five occasions) and faced with a team who have utterly dominated German football over the last decade (Bayern have won 11 titles in a row), it would’ve been very easy for Leverkusen to crumble.
Instead, they excelled.
Leverkusen expertly dispatched of Bayern at the BayArena, restricting their adversaries to 0.56 xG while scoring three goals of their own through Josip Stanisic – who is on loan from Bayern – Alex Grimaldo and Jeremie Frimpong.
The result leaves Alonso’s side five points clear in the Bundesliga, having not lost a single game in any competition so far this season. Pretty damn impressive if you ask us.
It says a lot about the team that Alonso has cultivated that Thomas Tuchel completely changed his tactical system in order to combat Leverkusen’s quality.
It says even more about Alonso that he foresaw this and made a few tactical tweaks to counteract it.
Tuchel has switched up his side in order to nullify the threat of Leverkusen’s flying wing-backs – particularly the direct Frimpong on the right side – sacrificing a man in midfield to do so. Using a crystal ball (probably), Alonso foresaw this tweak, starting Stanisic in Frimpong’s stead in order to have an extra player who could drift into midfield to provide overloads in the middle of the park on and close up any half-spaces Harry Kane, Jamal Musiala and co were hoping to hurt Leverkusen in.
That slight change proved to be one of…
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