Obsessive! He's worked under Guardiola, Mourinho and Ancelotti - but what are the secrets of Xabi Alonso, Liverpool's manager in waiting? Mail Sport spends two days with him to find out what makes him tick

Xabi Alonso has gained an impressive managerial reputation in a short periodKlopp updates LIVE: Reds boss announces he will leave at the end of the season No Salah, no problem! Liverpool can thank Jurgen Klopp for an 'exceptional' squad rebuild - It's All Kicking Off

Xabi Alonso. Once the prince of Liverpool’s midfield, a man who may now become the king of Anfield.

As news of Jurgen Klopp’s seismic departure began to sink in, the question Liverpool fans are asking is: who is next?

Today was the biggest football day in Liverpool since Kenny Dalglish resigned in 1991. And 15 years after Alonso departed Anfield as a player to join Real Madrid, Alonso is the heir to the throne.

At 42, he is the hottest young manager in Europe. His adventurous Bayer Leverkusen side lead the Bundesliga and are winning rave reviews with the bold style they have taken to Bayern Munich. Liverpool have noticed.

He can still play too. When Mail Sport dropped in to see him recently, his dazzling passing style was still clear for all to see.

Jurgen Klopp rocked the football world by announcing that he will leave Liverpool at the end of the season

Klopp joined Liverpool in 2015 and has turned the Reds back into European and domestic champions in the following years

Bayer Leverkusen boss Xabi Alonso is the hottest managerial property in Europe

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Yes, he’s still got it, alright; that much is clear. On a lush training pitch next to Bayer Leverkusen’s stadium, Alonso is fizzing balls around with pinpoint accuracy.

As a midfielder with Liverpool and beyond, he made football look easy. Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Spain also benefitted from his swagger.

His haul of 17 major trophies, including a World Cup and two Champions Leagues, and 114 caps reflected his genius. Watching him pass this drizzly day confirms magic remains in his boots. It looks so easy.

The difference between then and now, though, is the fact that Alonso has 20 pairs of eyes studying him, a group that listens to his every word. No wonder. Alonso’s star as a manager is rising, his impact on Leverkusen in short period of time nothing short of staggering.

When he was appointed in early October, 2022, Leverkusen were in the relegation zone. Today, they proudly sit top of the Bundesliga on 48 points, four clear of Harry Kane and company.

Could they really stop the Bayern Munich juggernaut and wreck Harry Kane’s first season abroad by lifting the Meisterschale?

‘We have got our position but we have this passion, this will, to continue doing the right things,’ Alonso tells Mail Sport. ‘Maybe in the future we can do something nice. We will see. But we don’t look ahead. We go step by step. That is in our DNA – how we are going to work things out.’

Watching Alonso work confirms everything his old team-mates told you about what his future would look like. Everyone knew he would become a manager; he was a leader who commanded respect and had a clear idea of how the game should be played.

The Leverkusen players relish working under Alonso and listen to his every word

Alonso insists that his Bayer Leverkusen team will take things step by step

Leverkusen boss Alonso is first in the building each morning and last to leave each night

Alonso is excelling in his task of trying to stop Harry Kane and the Bayern Munich juggernaut

This remains true. We have come to spend 48 hours in Northern Germany, to get an understanding of what he is doing; observing him the day before Leverkusen play Molde in their final Europa League game, you see a man comfortable in his surroundings.

He doesn’t waste a single second of a session. When a drill finishes, Alonso will knock a ball into the group of players, so they are always thinking about having it at their feet. That came naturally to him and he wants them to be similarly comfortable.

‘This is my task, my job, my passion – this is what I am enjoying doing,’ he says. ‘I like to be close to the players, for sure, trying new things and making sure they have this commitment. We have to get the message across that each session is important.

‘It means something, the things we are doing are for a reason. We have been working together now with most of the guys for one year and two months and the dynamic now is quite good. That is what we have to do, to keep that focus.

‘The message is that we have to be the best version of ourselves, from Monday to Friday, so we are ready for Saturday. I want to be close to them, talking to them, on the pitch and off the pitch. But, at the same time, we can never be too relaxed.’

He certainly won’t relax. Club officials describe his attention to detail as being obsessive and, while it might sounded clichéd, Alonso is first in the building each morning and last to leave each night – there is no comprise. Long hours are essential.

When he first took the job, the pressure he put himself under was, by his own admission, ‘intense’; his wife, Nagora, stayed in Spain with their three children for the first six weeks and only when they arrived in Germany did he feel balance once more. The family home is now in Dusseldorf.

But during those six weeks, he set a tone. Two days before the end of the World Cup break, he went into work and saw a handful of injured players doing rehab out on the grass; rather than leave them alone, Alonso got changed, put on his trainers and joined them for the next hour.

Alonso gave third-choice goalkeeper Niklas Lomb a rare start in the game against Molde

During an illustrious playing career Alonso won the Champions League with Liverpool in 2005

Another thing he implemented was a ‘breakfast club’ – on the third floor of the Bay Arena’s West Tribune, the squad assembles each morning to have breakfast together. The key to success, he knows, is harmony and spirit.

To emphasise this, his team selection for the Molde game was significant. He gave third choice goalkeeper Niklas Lomb a rare start, rewarding his attitude. Here was a clear message that everyone has a role to play for him.

‘So far we have been able to find two very important things,’ he says. ‘How we want to play and how we want to compete in terms of football and in terms of our mentality. When we are able to combine those things, we will be in a good mood.’

The mood in this city, with its population of 160,000, is buoyant. Bundesliga games are sold out and a measure of the team’s popularity is shown by the fact they took 4,000 travelling fans to recent fixtures in Stuttgart and Bremen; Alonso has lit a spark.

But why should this be a surprise? He worked under Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, Rafa Benitez, Carlo Ancelotti and Vicente Del Bosque, analysing their methods and understanding what it takes to manage at the highest level.

There will come a point in the future when he will have his pick of the biggest jobs around. With his affinity and connections on Merseyside, plenty will see him as Jurgen Klopp’s heir apparent. Similarly, the feeling in Madrid is that he’s destined to work at the Santiago Bernabeu.

But he is not in any rush – and why should he be? Contracted to July 2026, Alonso is building an exciting team, having remodelled it this summer: 19 players were moved out, including Moussa Diaby to Aston Villa for £50million, with eight arriving.

He had a clear plan of what needed to be done and his big additions – Nathan Tella, £20million from Southampton, the Nigeria international Victor Boniface and Granit Xhaka from Arsenal – have all made a difference. The recruitment has worked.

‘It was fundamental the decisions that we took,’ Alonso agrees. We had the idea before the end of last year how we wanted to restructure the team and we have many important players who are doing a lot of good things.’

And how they did good things against Molde. Tella was superb, benefitting from a fifth minute touchline tutorial from his manager; Jonas Hoffman, another new boy, was excellent, as was Adam Hlozek, who was credited with scoring two goals.

They won 5-1, switching seamlessly through three different systems, and were the only team in the Europa League to win all six group games. They reached the semi-finals last season, losing 1-0 to Roma, and they are equipped to go deep in the competition again.

At some point Alonso will have his pick of the biggest managerial jobs but he isn’t in any rush

The recruitment of players such as Nathan Tella has been helpful for Leverkusen’s progression

Should he become the first Leverkusen manager to win a trophy since 1993, his stock would go through the roof and he is happy to dream – but he is also a realist. The hardest part of this journey, for team and manager, is still to come.

‘Those who want to be relaxed, get punished immediately as soon as they do that,’ he said before the team’s winter break. ‘Hopefully we are not that stupid. We cannot take anything for granted. I don’t really care, to be honest, about how many games we keep winning. I don’t care what has happened.

‘I only care about what is coming. My only thoughts now are Eintracht and Bochum. We need to finish this last week with full gas, with full motivation. We have to make the last effort.’

His thoughts might turn to Anfield sooner than he thought. They will certainly be thinking about him.