Bundesliga winner
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Bayer Leverkusen head coach Xabi Alonso has confirmed that he will depart the Bundesliga club at the end of the season, bringing an end to a three-year spell at the club that brought with it unrivalled success. At a press conference on Friday, the Spaniard revealed that he would be stepping down from his role at Leverkusen, but would not confirm if he would be the next Real Madrid manager. The 43-year-old head coach is widely expected to replace Carlo Ancelotti in the Spanish capital, but refused to be drawn on specifics about his future. Reports in Spain suggest that Alonso has agreed a three-year deal with the Madrid club.
“This week the club and I have agreed that these two games are going to be my last two games as Bayer Leverkusen coach,” said Alonso in the press conference. “Now is the right moment to announce it because we have always had this good communication with the club and now that we have clarity it is the right moment to say that is a moment with mixed emotions. I’m not going to talk about the future because we know we wanted to have a proper farwell on Sunday for some players and myself.”
Appointed a few weeks into the 2022/23 season with the team sitting just above the Bundesliga relegation zone, Alonso quickly instilled tactical discipline and confidence, steering Leverkusen to a sixth-place finish and European qualification in his debut season. In the following season, Alonso led Leverkusen to unprecedented success. The club won its first-ever Bundesliga title, going the entire league campaign unbeaten and breaking Bayern Munich’s 11-year hold on the league title. Under his leadership, Leverkusen also reached the final of the UEFA Europa League and lifted the German Cup, completing a historic domestic double and nearly achieving a treble.
Beyond silverware, Alonso’s tenure was also defined by the manner in which his side’s played an all-conquering style of possession football, which harkened back to Pep Guardiola’s time at Bayern. Such tactics, coupled with remarkable success on the pitch, earned Alonso a huge amount of praise and attention from bigger clubs. Last season the Spaniard was widely tipped to replace Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool and was offered the Bayern job in the summer of 2024 when Thomas Tuchel departed the Munich side, but Alonso opted to stay at Leverkusen. Now, having finished second in the league to Bayern and with tough decisions to be made over a big rebuild of the squad, Alonso and Leverkusen have decided to part companies, allowing the young manager to pursuit his ambitions of managing Madrid next season.
