Xabi Alonso isn’t coming to save your team – not yet

LEVERKUSEN – Xabi Alonso has always done things at his own speed. As a player, it was his coolness, his control, his capacity to wait until precisely the right moment that made him one of the finest midfielders of his generation.

As he contemplated the idea of becoming a coach, he saw no reason to change. All he knew was that he was not in a rush.

“I had an idea that I did not want to go too quickly,” he said. “I had not really mapped anything out.”

Everything about Alonso seemed to indicate not only that he would go into management when his playing days drew to a close, and it was almost that he should.

He had, after all, the perfect education.

He had played for some of the most garlanded clubs in Europe. He was one of the most decorated players of his generation, having won the Champions League with Liverpool and Real Madrid, domestic titles with Real and Bayern Munich, the World Cup and two European Championships with Spain.

He had learnt from Rafael Benitez at Liverpool; Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane at Real; Pep Guardiola and Ancelotti again at Bayern.

And, just as important, he had been a keen and gifted student. In the last few years of his career, in Real and Bayern, Alonso actively sought to learn what it took to be a manager.

He made a point of peppering Ancelotti’s and Guardiola’s staff members with questions, trying to arm himself with as much knowledge as possible. “I tried to be curious about the manager’s work,” the 41-year-old said.

He had always been more cerebral than most of his peers, an avid reader off the field and an expert interpreter of the game on it. His coaches, modern football’s most revered minds, regarded him as their brains on the field.

From the moment he retired, Alonso could probably have walked into any job he wanted. He could have fast-tracked his coaching qualifications, started doing a bit of judicious punditry work, called in a few favours and been in charge of an underperforming Champions League team almost before the year was out. That, though, is not his style.

And so, instead, he took a sabbatical, and then set about earning his spurs. He spent three years back home in San Sebastian, working in the youth academy at Real Sociedad, his first club. As far as it is possible for someone of his renown, Alonso stepped into the shadows.

Frequently, someone would try to coax him into the light – from Spain, from Germany, from England.

“I had other possibilities,” he said. “But I didn’t want to go somewhere I was not convinced.”

He wanted to wait for just the right time, just the right place. A year ago, when Bayer Leverkusen approached him, he had a sense that it might have arrived.

“I had the feeling that I had taken the right steps,” he added.

It felt like a risk, of course, but he was ready.

Leverkusen seemed a good match, the sort of club where expectations are high, but not unrealistic, and the pressure intense, rather than overbearing.

It was a team with a good squad with ample room for improvement, a clear structure, a coherent vision of itself.

“I had the feeling that everyone was pushing in the same direction,” Alonso said. “That’s helpful. I had the feeling it was the right time and the right place.”

He took the job.

It was at that point that Alonso’s plan to take things slowly started to fall apart. Leverkusen had been toiling at the foot of the Bundesliga when he arrived. But by the end of his first season, he had managed to steer the club back into the Europa League.

The job would soon get harder. Over the summer, Leverkusen sold Moussa Diaby, the team’s most coveted asset. And yet, after 11 games of the new Bundesliga season, Alonso’s team have 10 wins and a draw. Leverkusen, who have been runners-up five times but never won the title, are top of the table in Germany, two points ahead of Bayern.

He has overseen the best start to a Bundesliga season any team has ever made, outstripping even the imperious, Guardiola-era Bayern side in which he was a central figure.

Alonso, it turns out, seems to be exactly as good at management as everyone assumed he would be. That does not mean he has changed his approach. He is still not in a rush. The problem is that the same cannot be said of the sport.

Alonso always stood out because of his patience, because he possessed what the industry lacked. But barely a year into his senior management career, he is already the favourite to replace Ancelotti at Real, and a contender to fill any vacancy that might arise at both Bayern and Liverpool.

Alonso’s start has been quicker than even he might have imagined. That has brought opportunity, but it has brought a challenge, too. He has to figure out how he can continue to take things slow. NYTIMES

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