Serial Winner Xabi Alonso Has Soaring Bayer Leverkusen Dreaming Of Title
NDTV
With 16 wins and a draw in 17 matches in all competitions, Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen could scarcely have had a better start to the season.
With 16 wins and a draw in 17 matches in all competitions, Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen could scarcely have had a better start to the season. A serial winner in a club career which included stints at Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, Alonso was a key member of the Spain team which broke through for a first World Cup victory in 2010, bookended by two European Championships. Alonso retired in 2017 and moved into coaching, masterminding Real Sociedad B's promotion to the second division for the first time since the early 1960s.
He came to Leverkusen in October 2022, with the club wallowing in the relegation zone.
Despite some early wobbles, winning only one of his first seven games, Alonso took them to sixth place by the season's end and a Europa League semi-final.
Leverkusen's brilliant start to 2023-24 has fans dreaming of a first-ever Bundesliga title.
But even away from Germany's football-mad industrial Rhine-Ruhr region, plenty believe one of the game's premier players is becoming the next elite manager.
