Xabi Alonso: 'Student of the game' Bayer Leverkusen boss was always going to be a manager, says Peter Crouch

TNT Sports expert Peter Crouch has said that Xabi Alonso was one of the players he looked up to in the Liverpool dressing room, and he “learned so much” from the current Bayer Leverkusen boss. 

Alonso, who was with Crouch at Anfield between 2005 and 2008, played 143 times for the Merseyside club before joining Real Madrid in 2009 for a reported £30 million. 

The Spaniard has since become a manager, first coaching the Real Sociedad B team, before taking the reins at Leverkusen in October 2022, his first role at senior level. 

Alonso inherited the Die Werkself when they were second bottom of the Bundesliga, but he stabilised the club and guided them to sixth place that season. 

This term, however, the 42-year-old has led Leverkusen to a maiden Bundesliga title, running away with the league by 17 points. 

Alonso’s side have also not suffered defeat once across all three competitions this campaign, and would be a step closer to completing an unbeaten Treble should they lift the UEFA Europa League trophy. 

Speaking on TNT Sports ahead of the final in Dublin, Crouch said of his former team-mate: “He was someone that you looked up to in the dressing room. 

“We had so many big characters, but he was certainly one of the people that you would [look up to]. 

“I learned so much from him just playing with him in that short period. He had so much professionalism; a massive will to win and succeed. In England, we felt that a lot of the foreign players would come over and would be technically better than us. 

“But we always had that work rate and never-say-die spirit. He had that spirit as well. You don’t know where it came from, but he had that winning mentality, and he was always a student of the game; someone that wanted to learn and consistently ask questions. 

“I remember him asking Rafa Benitez insistently, ‘Are we playing this way or that way?’. He wanted to know. He had a thirst for knowledge; he was like a sponge. You never know whether a player is going to go on to be a manager of this calibre, but you always would understand that he would be a manager. The success he’s having now is just unbelievable.”

Lynsey Hipgrave also asked TNT Sports pundits Joe Cole and Crouch whether a potential unbeaten Treble for Leverkusen would go down as one of the greatest achievements in football history. 

“[An unbeaten Treble] has certainly got to be up there [with some of the greatest footballing achievements],” Cole, the former Chelsea and Liverpool midfielder, said. 

“At this level, to go that amount of games across three different competitions, encountering all the different styles of play, injuries, loss of form, and to stay unbeaten, and to win the three trophies, it just doesn’t happen at any level. People might argue that it’s the Europa League and not the Champions League, but it’s a difficult competition to win and it would be right up there with the greatest achievements in football.”

“[The treble would be] an incredible achievement,” Crouch added. 

“The Bundesliga is probably the biggest achievement when you consider some of the teams in that league and the fact that they’ve come from nowhere considering where they were last year. The biggest in football is a big question.”

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