As Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen saw of Freiburg on Sunday afternoon, a game lit up by the wizardry of Florian Wirtz, the records went tumbling quicker than a Jenga tower in a hurricane.
Xabi Alonso, per Opta, is now the first Leverkusen coach to win eight successive competitive games. Five straight home Bundesliga victories for the German giants for the first time in 20 years. A tally of 27 goals from nine matches – an average of three per game – is also a piece of club history.
Leverkusen have been here before, of course. The eternal bridesmaids are known, somewhat cruelly, as ‘Neverkusen’ for a reason. But with their staggering form showing no sign of slowing, Alonso’s hand might just be reaching for the bouquet.
Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen top of the Bundesliga
“You can look at our performances and see that our style has changed. He is a great coach,” Jeremie Frimpong, Leverkusen’s rampaging right-back, told Relevo, hailing the immediate and extraordinary impact of a man who took over a Bayer side in the Bundesliga relegation zone and has taken them from the bottom to the top in just 12 months.
“He came and gave us new energy. We have changed our style of play, our way of getting the ball out. And we all understand how we play, how we press and that kind of thing.”
“He is very understanding with the footballer and very talkative with all of us. When he explains something, he explains it until you understand it. As a player, that makes you feel very comfortable, you know you can ask him thing.”
There are shades of the way Ange Postecoglou has transformed Tottenham Hotspur in the job Alonso has done at the Bay Arena. A coach with a clear, coherent style of play turning a team previously considered less than the sum of their parts into precisely the opposite.
‘Exceptional’
According to Sky Sports, Tottenham showed an interest in Alonso before handing the reigns to Postecoglou this summer and, with eight wins and one draw from nine matches, the former is actually averaging more points per game than the latter this season, even with Spurs sitting pretty at the summit of the Premier League mountain.
“Xabi Alonso is doing an extraordinary job,” former Spurs boss Jose Mourinho said recently, a point which is becoming increasingly difficult to argue with.
Then again, having honed his supreme tactical understanding under some of the greatest tactical minds of the modern era – from Pep Guardiola to Vicente del Bosque, Rafa Benitez to Mourinho himself – Xabi Alonso’s emergence as a truly ‘exceptional’ head coach should perhaps come as no surprise.
He’s had some education, after all.
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