Xabi Alonso: "The World Cup did not show the evolution of football"

For years he was seen all over Spain wearing suits on billboards for the textile industry.

But Xabi Alonso (Tolosa, Gipuzkoa; 41 years old), the youngest son of former national team midfielder Periko Alonso, must have been born wearing a tracksuit.

This is how he presented himself last week to this interview, held in a box at the Bay Arena, the stadium of Bayer Leverkusen, the team he has led for 100 days under the watchful eye of the great clubs in Europe, curious about the evolution of a coach who makes his debut illuminated by an unparalleled career: world champion, double European champion, double Champions League champion, legend of Real Sociedad, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern.

Question

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In September 2014, during a Cologne-Bayern game, you surpassed 200 touches of the ball and broke the Bundesliga record for passes.

He then commented that during matches he used to keep track but that day he was surprised when they told him that it had exceeded 200. Do soccer players in action lose consciousness a bit, like dancers, or painters?

Answer

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We have seen in the big games, in the World Cup, in the Champions League, the unexpected things that can happen to a team when they dominate the game and suddenly something happens and they are

and are unable to turn that situation around.

You work on tactics, technique, the physical, but the mental... How is it done?

I don't know, but I see that it may be the next step.

It is very difficult.

Because there are moments —both on the field and on the wing— when you try to grasp the game, to know what is happening, but the game is already slipping out of your hands.

There are inertias that are difficult to control.

Even though you're a great team.

Emotional states often transcend the football level.

Q.

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Leverkusen was a team in crisis, in the middle of a successful season, on the fringes of a championship that probably isn't the one you know best about.

Why did you take the risk of coming to this club to start your coaching career?

R.

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He wanted to mark the times that I felt were natural.

That's how I started in children's school in Madrid and it helped me say: "I might like it."

The next step was to return home, to La Real, in an almost professional structure, without the urgent need for the result but with all the means to work freely and calmly to get to know myself, to see where I was failing and where not.

Because you have to know yourself: how authentic you are when it comes to interpreting what you feel.

My last spell at Bayern has a lot to do with my decision to come here.

German clubs have very little vertigo to give youngsters opportunities.

I saw him with Nagelsmann at Hoffenheim, at Gladbach, and at Dortmund too... He saw me.

It fit.

Xabi Alonso Scheidemann/ Bayer 04 Leverkusen

Q.

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Very few children of great players end up becoming great players.

You di it.

And not only that: now he wants to dedicate himself to a strenuous trade.

Weren't you alarmed to see how his father suffered that transition from playing to training?

What is in his head to get into this mess?

R.

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I like football too much to get away from it.

Not being able to play it makes this job throw me off and makes me get up at two in the morning and start preparing my things because I'm tossing and turning.

Until you tie the loose end you don't stay calm.

When the bug enters your blood, it doesn't go away.

I won't be the only coach who does these things.

Q.

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He has recovered Florian Wirtz, one of the great promises of German football.

What kind of player is he?

R.

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There are beautiful and good players.

Beautiful is the one who makes beautiful things, but that is not efficient.

Why is Messi good?

Because he knows how to make the pass simple: give it to the one who is in the best position.

That's being good, not always doing the most brilliant thing.

Florian does.

That's why he's so good.

He has been injured and needs competition rhythm.

Rock

starts in Monchengladbach on the 22nd. In the Bundesliga you have to work hard at every game: from zero to 90 the teams are a roller.

Q.

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In what sense?

R.

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The pace is constantly very high.

Since you don't control the transition, you suffer.

In Spain it is played in more intermediate spaces, in England the spaces depending on the rival are reduced, and here it is a wider space, more extensive, it is covered from area to area.

Dominating the opponent so much is very difficult because many teams go on the attack.

Here the coaches are very brave to convey to the players that they go.

You see few very defensive teams.

Here they are to go looking, to push high, to create many man-on-man situations.

More than in the Premier.

In the Premier there are great teams that make low-block proposals, and they do it very well.

In the League they have another time.

The player profile is different.

More information

Xabi Alonso, coach-player to instill his proposal

Q.

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There are coaches who show that they need to leave their mark.

This does not seem to concern you.

Is your ego suppression spontaneous or calculated?

R.

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Being in the Real branch, a bit in the shadows, has allowed me to focus on my relationship with the players in a different way: “Turrientes, how can I improve you?;

Pacheco, Karrikaburu, Zubimendi… how can I be generous towards you?

Having been in Zubieta has helped me to say: "Xabi, the topic is not about you, the topic is about them."

I don't get to be a sergeant or a scoundrel, but we have to play different music

Q.

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To which of your coaches do you owe this way of feeling about work?

Ancelotti, Mourinho, Guardiola, Del Bosque...

R.

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To my father.

Not that he studied it.

I've seen him as a crib.

He had the ethic of teamwork, something that belongs to the Real's character.

Know that the priority is generosity.

As a midfielder you are generous with the team: you don't play for your personal shine.

As a player, what did you want?

Better players than me around me and help them to be.

Because if I was the best, then the midfielder, the midfielder and the winger weren't that good.

I wanted to give them good balls so they could do what I couldn't do.

Right now, if I can make the players better, I can be a better coach.

The technical and tactical nuances come later.

Come here to be a sergeant with an iron fist?

Not!

I like discipline and basic professional standards, but being a scoundrel doesn't work for me.

Q.

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You were the teacher of a demarcation that is the key to everything.

What should be the references of a midfielder so as not to get lost in superfluous movements in a football that demands that more and more things be done?

R.

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You have to go into the game thinking that the field is a map.

You have to control the zones and know how many players are left and right.

If there are seven on one side, on the other there are three and the goalkeeper.

The superiority has to be.

If there is only one opposing striker, I have to look forward, if there are two I have to help my center backs more.

It is a permanent counter to know how to take the next step.

I'm not going to be the one to solve in the last third, but the one that allows you to get there well.

Xabi Alonso celebrates a goal during a Bayer Leverkusen match. KAI PFAFFENBACH (REUTERS)

Q.

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What does the line of the ball mean for the central midfielder?

R.

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The midfielders from behind, to be able to see 180 degrees forward;

and the interiors and ends ahead.

If you are an Özil and you come from behind the ball, we are not effective: wait for it to reach you.

You have to count.

How many of us are behind and in front.

It depends on the opponent: how many do you want behind the ball and how many on the back line?

Where do I want the opposing defense?

Defending towards his goal or towards mine?

There you see what you want from your team.

Q.

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What distinguishes extraordinary midfielders?

R.

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That the best always seem to have a second more with the ball, they have anticipated their position and control for the next.

Those who always have time to improve the ball are the best, because they send the ball with a message: “I'll give it to you for the next thing”, “I'll give it to you for that leg so you can control it…”.

Q.

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Don't players with superior intelligence to understand the game, like you or Guardiola, run the risk of thinking that transmitting ideas is the same as executing them when they join coaches?

R.

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At Sanse [the subsidiary of Real Sociedad] I occasionally went to play the field.

He played with them.

To say: 'what I see from the outside and want, how do we do it inside?'.

You realize that seeing it is very easy but feeling it... You may believe that you know a recipe very well, but whether it tastes good and works is something else.

I liked to see that feeling that there are things that are more theoretical than practical.

The things that we coaches have in mind cannot always be replicated.

You have to assume naturally that we are not always there for this.

Neither the possession nor the short pass will go out of style.

The problem is not forgetting to attack space.

Sacrificial runs are increasingly important, those that you do knowing that the ball will most likely not reach you, but that serve to create space

Q.

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When they eliminated Spain and Germany in the World Cup, the great representatives of the game of possession, the press repeated that more than 1,000 passes in a game are a sign that something is not working.

You, who broke the Bundesliga passing record, what do you think a short pass has to have to be unbalancing?

R.

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But how can there not be horizontal passes and short passes?

That will always be and must be.

How is Spain going to play?

Well to that!

I couldn't play transition or just direct play.

Of course you have to play short.

In every team there are processes.

Argentina also in the first phase played with many horizontal passes and ended the World Cup being more vertical.

Spain has to have that.

Arsenal, who are playing very well, have a lot of short passes and then have a change of pace.

But in the initiation phase, he attracts rivals with short passes very well.

That has to be so.

Q.

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Possession hasn't gone out of style, then?

R.

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And what about teams that have a lot of possession?

Are they not modern or effective?

Possession without a change of pace and without depth is difficult.

If you have too many players behind the ball, it's complicated.

But if you have a possession with which you attract well to do damage, and you are well placed on the loss to give you that possibility to go up ... that will never go out of style.

The higher we control the game, the more I like it.

But in Leverkusen I am also learning to dominate the space from not so high up to arrive according to the qualities of the players, who are very good in transition.

That is making me feel other records that I had so far made with Madrid as a player, when 50 meters from our goal we lived in peace.

More information

Xabi Alonso: "Spain is the most perfect team I've ever played for"

Q.

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During the World Cup we saw closed teams that beat dominant teams.

You have been one of the best defensive pivots of your time.

What type of pass does the most damage to pivots when they close behind?

The short pass to the back or the change of direction?

R.

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The one who looks for your back.

But then this pass has to have another pass to the back of the defense.

If the one who receives behind the midfielder is the striker, who goes behind the defense?

That last line must be attacked with the forward, with the interior, with the winger, or with whoever.

But that last line must be attacked.

Or be well prepared for the loss.

You can prepare the academic or the chaotic.

Faced with well-organized defenses, it is often after your loss that they become disorganized and you create the situations.

Q.

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In general, does the short pass order better than the long one?

R.

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Yes, but taking risks.

The ball has to go in-out-in and from left to right.

If it goes only horizontally… When they defend you with two lines of four and they move horizontally they don't get tired, but when you put passes in and out and move them from front to back, a space will be created.

The problem is not the short pass but playing only with the ball and forgetting to attack space.

The problem is how to attack space so that the ball gets there.

Sacrificial runs are becoming more and more important, those that you do knowing that the ball will most likely not reach you, but that serve to create space.

Only with the pass, without the movements without the ball, it is very difficult.

Q.

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Is the World Cup a laboratory that shows where football is going?

R.

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I don `t believe.

In the World Cup, emotions, coexistence, group spirit weigh more.

There are different ingredients.

When you see the Leagues and the Champions League you see a little better where the game is evolving.

R.

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What do you see in the Champions League?

R.

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That each time the teams are better.

More complete, more dynamic, more flexible with systems, more aggressive, with more comprehensive players.

Q.

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Favorites?

R.

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City, Bayern I love to see it, PSG if all the pieces add up... and Madrid always.

Because Carlo [Ancelotti] has emotional intelligence, which is why he is Carlo and why we all go and give him a big hug.

He has that aura.

We talk a lot about soccer.

But the energy that is generated in a locker room with emotional intelligence, apart from the technical and tactical nuances, I don't know the weight that he can have: 50-50?

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