Simeone tests the man who doesn’t have time, Xabi Alonso

Carro put his name on the table and sporting director former football player Simon Rolfes saw it positively. The team hadn’t started the season well, stuck in the relegation areas and experiencing a lot of irregularity in the Champions League and a win against Atletico still kept them alive in the group. previous campaign Leverkusen He finished third in the Bundesliga and reached the qualifying rounds of the Champions League. Czech striker Patrick Schick stood out as the league’s second top scorer after Lewandowski, with 24 goals and 35 goals. Next to him, Frenchman Moussa Diaby burst on the left flank, scoring 17 goals and providing 14 assists. And in command of the operations appeared the figure of Florian Wirtz, one of the jewels of German football, a junior squad who added 10 goals and 14 assists. Wirts made his Mannschaft debut, becoming the third youngest player in the history of the German national team. However, the young player, including Real Madrid and Bayern, finished the season early by tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

Without Wirtz, still in recovery, the season started badly. Alonso still has Schick and Diaby, but the forward has only three goals, one and two assists from the Frenchman. Without Wirtz and Bellarabi, who tore his lateral meniscus in his left knee in August, Xabi clings to the two newcomers at Hlozek and Hudson-Odoi, although they’re still adjusting. In this first chaos, this Bayer’s pillars were Ecuadorian defender Piero Hincapié and Dutch lane Jeremie Frimpong.

Balance, time and command in fields

The first thing Xabi tried was to balance the team, and for that, he tried to apply 3-4-3, which turned into a five-man defense on defense as Hincapié showed the lines at the back and the wings sharpened. Attack with the rise of Frimpong and Baker. However, the team does not cease to be a solver in the fields. Xabi herself admitted this while talking about her priorities: “We need a mindset of always being prepared. But we also need time. Just as we need to win at home, we need maximum concentration and good body language to bring energy to the stadium with a good performance. We have to improve in every field. The most important thing for us right now is the balance between offensive and defensive work.”

Alonso’s bench debut was unbeatable, beating the devastating Schalke (4-0) going to the second German. Later, the weight of harsh reality began to crush the old realist’s idea of ​​play. First relegated to Porto (0-3) in the BayArena in the Champions League, then lost to Eintracht (5-1) in Frankfurt and managed to save a valid match against Wolfsburg (2-2) last weekend . to get out of relegation positions. A game put in his face ten minutes later when the referee signals a penalty in favor of Bayer, which Moussa Diaby missed. Seven minutes later, however, Czech Adam retaliated by scoring a pass from Hlozek. Half an hour later, Robert Andrich’s own goal drew Wolfsburg. In the second half, Croatia’s Niko Kovac’s men took the lead when Burkinabe turned Edmond Tapsoba’s penalty onto Maximilian Arnold. Leverkusen’s efforts finally paid off, however, when Frimpong beat Caastels and struck the final balance that left Xabi’s team one point above Stuttgart’s hallmark of relegation. Missed penalties, own goals, injuries… Xabi’s luck is not going well. In his first match as a coach in Germany.

Moreover, Alonso is keeping the board’s pulse to prevent them from selling the Ecuadorian Hincapié, a player he really wants. athletic, Who’s next this week in Champions and English Arsenal playing. The directive calls for 45 million, a very high figure for the time being, which demoralizes the suitors and buys the Basque coach some time. Leverkusen asked Xabi to extradite Bayer to the region that gave him the right to play in European competitions next year. They’re currently nine points away from Mainz, which marks the European region, the same nine spots they have in their lockers. They also ask him to put the team in the Champions League round of 16, repeating last year’s success, which seems more complicated as they are last in the group, but in reality the distances are very small. In the Brugge classification, which was the biggest surprise of the group, Porto is second with six points, followed by Atletico with four points and Leverkusen with three points. In the first stand in Germany, the pharmacists beat the rojiblancos and as a result they have to repeat it at the Metropolitano if they want to have the last day options where they will take a Bruges team risking nothing.

It’s early for an Xabi who wants “time”, but after four games on the German bench, the Tolosa player is in jeopardy for most of his credit. Continuing in Europe will also allow him to take advantage of the World Cup break to bring the team and game idea together. He will pass the test before Simeone. Xabi confirms that he has learned a lot from all of his coaches, “from Pep to Mourinho or Luis Aragonés passing through Vicente del Bosque.” Because Griezmann’s participation is not limited, he will need to put everything he’s learned into practice to take down a reinvented Atlético team. Xabi has no time.