“I learned that it’s not what you have that counts, it’s who you have!” he said. Lou Holtz. The legendary college football coach, author of some of the most trite aphorisms in the game. coachingonce confessed that the accidental discovery of the war diaries of his father, a tormented American sailor and veteran of the Battle of Saipan, gave him the clarity he needed to become a good coach.
Xabi Alonso had nothing but the memory of the lessons learned from Guardiola, Mourinho and Ancelotti, his teachers, when he arrived in Leverkusen a year ago. But above all, everything he observed in Periko, his father, a former midfielder in Donosti, a paradigm of the altruistic worker and honest and long-suffering coach, stirred in his conscience.
Alonso had never coached in the First Division and his problems multiplied. The team was sinking into relegation positions and the squad seemed depressed. There was not a single top center back there and the insecurity worsened them with a domino effect, as the midfielders hid so as not to receive the ball under pressure and the forwards suffered from anxiety. The best player, Florian Wirtz, had been injured for months. But when he showed up, on October 6, 2022, Alonso acted as if that were an opportunity. “I’m not afraid,” he warned. “I want us to be dominant.”
A year later, Alonso is, after Roberto de Zerbi, the great revelation of the European benches. The rigorous mourning that he wore this Thursday when he went out onto the field in Leverkusen, black pants and tracksuit, like a village priest, before hosting Qarabag in the Europa League, contrasted with the splendid moment he is going through on a professional and personal level. Bayer leads the Bundesliga and is the sole leader of its group in the Europa League thanks to a dynamic and forceful game. His name was included in the shortlist that Real Madrid is considering to succeed Carlo Ancelotti at the end of the season when the bells of media noise greeted him with ringing last Wednesday, after the Supreme Court acquitted him of the crime of tax fraud that The Prosecutor’s Office charged in a process launched in 2016 by direct order of Consuelo Madrigal, then State Attorney General.
Madrigal Order of Consolation
Consuelo Madrigal, according to sources close to the Prosecutor’s Office, insisted on pursuing Alonso after obtaining a sentence against Javier Mascherano in 2016. The former Argentine Barça player agreed when the Prosecutor’s Office requested a prison sentence for him for defrauding 1.5 million euros through companies based in Madeira and Miami. Mascherano’s scheme, who shared an advisor with Alonso, was identical to that of his friend except for one detail: Alonso never created a company in Miami, outside the European Union. At the beginning of the inspection, the prosecutors were unable to determine that there was fraud and concealment, since the Basque player always declared his income through Madeira to the Treasury. The search for parallels that justified a legal doctrine began to falter since the investigating judge issued his first skeptical observation in a ruling that Alonso’s representatives kept as a winning card. No matter how much the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office worked hard to take the case to the Supreme Court, they were unable to get the judges to consider a crime.
“It was a long battle and it was not easy,” Alonso commented this Friday; “But from the beginning I was convinced that he had acted legally and had confidence in Justice. The Court ruled in favor of me in the first and second instance, but the Treasury authorities and the prosecutors persecuted me. And they asked for prison! I think they [los fiscales] They knew they weren’t right and they just wanted to pressure me into reaching an agreement. But I was stubborn. I felt it like a threat that weighed on me for almost ten years. I wanted to fight until the end and I am happy that it is finally over. Now I feel [la sentencia absolutoria del Tribunal Supremo] as if he had won a football title.”
In the midst of a wave of fraud cases against illustrious members of the football union, Alonso became a stumbling block. Where Mascherano, Messi, Cristiano, Modric, Carvalho, Coentrao, Di María or Mourinho gave their consent and admitted that they had committed a crime before paying and settling the investigations, the 41-year-old Basque remained firm.
All the pride that Alonso showed throughout seven years of judicial battle against the State Administration remains invisible in the workplace. When it comes to managing the teams, be it the Real Sociedad reserve team or Leverkusen, the coach has shown true proof of humility. “When Alonso makes decisions, he does so without being affected by vanity,” a Chelsea analyst observed a year ago. “He doesn’t want to impose his brand. He puts himself below the players. That mental balance, in a person with his history, will give him credibility in the big locker rooms.”
Given the task of organizing a group of insecure footballers without much level, he leaned towards pragmatism. Ancelottian rather than by experimentation guardiolian. He began by giving up the 4-3-3, a formation that he understood better and that would have earned him a reputation as an innovator, to develop a scheme with a three-center defense in which everything is based on providing simple references for the players to follow. orient in space. Obsessed with controlling the transitions, especially in defense, Alonso made sure to populate the axis of the field with three markers (Kossounou Tah and Tapsoba) and two midfielders (Palacios and Xhaka) who offered easy and numerous support when releasing the short ball. the same as providing quick aid in case of loss. Adding people in the middle complicated the high pressure of the rivals while taking advantage of the spaces that these complications would generate to associate free men and make superiorities around the interiors. For this, he arranged massive and fast attacks through all the lanes of the attack, in maneuvers in which the precision of Wirtz in the midfield stand out, the imbalance of Grimaldo and Frimpong on the wings, and the final touch of the Nigerian Victor Boniface, 22 years old. , at the point of the attack. The 80 million euros that were spent in the summer on transfers only hit the spot.
Periko in the Leverkusen stands
Against all odds, Bayer, the team with the fourth largest sponsorship budget in the Bundesliga, has become the highest producer of shots on goal: 66, followed by Bayern Munich with 63. A source of controversy in Germany, where Steffen Baumgart , Cologne coach puts his finger on the sore spot. “I don’t understand why Bayern spent 100 million for Kane when they could sign Boniface,” said Baumgart, much to the chagrin of the Bavarians.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Xabi is an exceptional coach,” Thomas Tuchel, the Bayern coach, said before visiting Leverkusen last month. “He is an absolutely top coach.” The match ended 2-2 after 90 very uncomfortable minutes for Bayern and Tuchel. It was the confirmation that the promise was fulfilled: Bayer had become a “dominant” team.
The 5-1 win against Qarabag in the Europa League confirms an upward trajectory in Xabi Alonso’s splendid autumn. His father, Periko, celebrated each goal with clenched fists, standing guard of the bench from the Leverkusen stands.
You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Xabi #Alonso #feel #won #title