sport news Dry your eyes Tottenham - Xabi Alonso is staying at Bayer Leverkusen trends now

Dry your eyes Tottenham Hotspur, and re-adjust your sights West Ham United: Xabi Alonso is staying at Bayer Leverkusen. He has confirmed he will be at the Bundesliga team until the end of the next season, which is consistent with his measured approach of building a coaching CV, step by step.

And it’s beginning to look quite the CV. There is a danger in overestimating articulate players, believing they will make natural managers. The coaches’ graveyard is littered with media-friendly ex pros, their glittering playing careers undone by the trials and tribulations of managing an actual dressing room full of footballers less-talented than yourself.

And yet with Alonso it’s hard not to be impressed. He took over in October with Leverkusen in relegation trouble and has guided them to the top seven and being on the brink of the Europa League final. 

A former manager in Jose Mourinho stands in his way and Leverkusen are 1-0 down against Roma from the first leg, so it will take something special at the BayArena to outsmart Jose on Thursday.

Whatever, it has been a wonderful transformation at Leverkusen and if they do make the final, they have the opportunity to make history, emulating the 1988 team which won the UEFA Cup, their only previous European trophy. And maybe put to bed the Bayer Never-kusen tag they earned after blowing a potential Bundesliga-DFB Pokal-Champions League treble in 2001-2002.

In the run up to Thursday’s match, Alonso confirmed what most had assumed in recent weeks, that, despite the links with Tottenham and West Ham, he will be staying and that he is planning for next season at Leverkusen, the signing of Granit Xhaka being his first major addition. His family is settled in Dusseldorf and there is no rush, it seems, to move.

There is so much superficially to like about Alonso, that is it is hard not to see him in an even more high-profile job soon. And hard not to project that trajectory on to the three biggest clubs of his career in Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. Make a success of this in the next few years and the next step could be a huge one.

It’s the little things that impress. The fact that his German remained good enough six years since his three seasons at Bayern that he could go straight into press conferences in the native language. 

That he spent three years at his home-town club Real Sociedad, coaching the B team, learning the trade, when there were bigger offers on the table. That he’s finishing off the job he came to do at Leverkusen, rather than cutting and running, Michael Beale style, as soon as his star is in the ascendant.

There is a quiet confidence about those career moves. If he is genuinely good – and the results at Leverkusen suggest he is – then the offers will surely come. He told Sud-deutsche Zeitung, in an in-depth interview, that he chose the Bundesliga for his first major job because he noted during his time at Bayern that clubs there ‘didn’t have a dizzy fit when they gave young coaches a chance.’ 

He cited Julian Nagelsmann at Hoffenheim and Edin Terzic at Dortmund. There is seriousness about projects in Germany that means you get a decent chance. (Todd Boehly take note).

He worries, like any

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