Why Xabi Alonso Should Avoid Liverpool (For Now)

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Xabi Alonso has led Bayer Leverkusen on a surprise Bundesliga title charge this season, managing to remain unbeaten in all competitions so far with his rapid-fire attacking style.

Now, with Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel both announcing that they are leaving their managerial posts at the end of the 2023-24 season, where should Xabi Alonso go next?

Joe Devine, JJ Bull and Jon Mackenzie are joined by Seb Stafford-Bloor to figure out if the Spaniard should head to Liverpool or Bayern Munich.

This is The Athletic’s Week in Football.

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00:00 Intro
00:15 Short-term considerations: Liverpool vs Bayern
04:40 Why not stay at Leverkusen?
05:47 Why short-term and long-term planning are inseparable
07:06 A comprehensive and clear career road map for Xabi Alonso
08:28 Pitfalls of succeeding dynasties
12:21 Could Alonso avoid these pitfalls at Liverpool?
20:33 Long-term planning: What’s Alonso’s tactical identity?
26:29 Could this work at Liverpool / Bayern?
29:18 Where should Xabi Alonso go?

#liverpool #bayern #premierleague #leverkusen #bundesliga

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Music sourced from Epidemic Sound
Additional footage sourced from AP Newsroom

Shabby Alonzo if he were to leave lusen this summer should he go to Liverpool or Bayern Munich well today I’m joined by JJ bull John McKenzie and Sebastian Stafford bla to discuss exactly That JJ set the stage for us at these various different clubs if Alonzo was to join Bayern or Liverpool this summer or indeed stay at lusen what are the what are the challenges wasting him well he would face many challenges at each of the individual clubs and what I’ve done

Is looked the pros and cons of each of those and what he might face in the short term starting with Liverpool so if he were to go to Liverpool what he’d join straight away is a well they’ve got a great Squad and a winning team it’s obviously very important and he’d be

Able to compete with the very best in the Premier League because that’s where all the best managers are and I think competitive people like to do that and also the expectations at Liverpool are somewhat achievable because it’s so competitive that you don’t you’re not expect it to win the league every single

Year nor win the champions league but if you compete at high level um then you it’s acceptable as long as you play ni football and they should be able to do that because they have the players for it and they’re already doing it the cons of Liverpool is that they’re coming to

An end of an era which is very very important something we’ll touch on quite a lot soon uh it’s very relevant that bit and also some of the key players are aging so you’ve got Mo Salah van Dy people like that they’ll need to be replaced at some point that’s maybe a

Long-term rebuild it depends how much control Alonzo has and what the structure is like at the club at the time also the other con of Liverpool is that Pep Guardiola is still in the Premier League while he’s there it’s very hard to win things so these are

Things you might consider is at the right time to go there whereas if he goes to Bayern Munich for example well they’ve got by God don’t you know they’ve got great players great individual players a lot of them going about they also H would have no real rivals in the league especially if

Alonzo were to join them because he is the Rival so that’s a benefit to him and it means he probably win trophies which is very useful many of his players at lusen may also depart in the summer so that kind of reduces the quality well absolutely and he might take some of

Them with him well the byn sort of buy players themselves don’t they they buy it for the manager well whatever they do uh he be expected to win the league like everyone else does um and he’d be able to compete for the Champions League realistically because he’d be a core of

Players that is good enough to do that but not expected to so again the pressure is um very high and you have to compete very highly in the Champions League with Bayern Munich but you don’t expect it to win it straight away the cons are that Bayern Munich are

Currently quite vulnerable like a giant a wounded Giant and whoever wants to attack that giant and uh hurt the giant also uh at Bayern Munich you get no time to build so if the theam has great individual players but the team’s not as cohesive as maybe you want it to be and

People are finding weaknesses and it’s not quite there needs a bit of work but you get no time to build and I went through the all the Bayern Munich managers I think back to like jff henis the first time he was there and uh what you have to do as a Bayern Munich

Manager is get um over 2.4 get 2.4 points per game to be able to be considered a success if you get lower than 2.4 points per game you’re not a success even if you win the league that’s quite a lot given that you can only win three in a game well that is

Correct and then what you have with Bayern Munich especially that that 2.4 points per game uh has to also be done by playing in a certain way like an attacking way that people are entertained by Otherwise like niik kovat won the league right but no one remembers kovat was he good Seb not

Really no see there you go do that’s the point right you can win the bunders Lea with Bayern and still be considered a failure absolutely you have to compete in everything but do it in the right way um and also like to compare that to Liverpool where I worked out the same

Thing since kened 1985 you have to win 1.8 points per game to be deemed a success how do you how do you work that out I the points per game that they’ve won yeah and then average that right okay and but how do you define who was a

Success and who wasn’t um by ones I think were good right and then looked at what they had and then with the successful ones like klopp or Kash or others in that list so I Jared jul would be considered a success I would think Liverpool Sim Rafa bonitz would be

Considered a success and they are about 1.8 points per game my final call of Bayern Munich which is that the expectations are incredible almost impossible to hit it’s impossible to win every single game uh but you’re expected to you have to win every single game something that people find especially in

Scotland if the manage Celtic and Rangers if you don’t win every single game you’re a failure basically media is only really interested in Bayern Munich in in Germany as well like in England you got you got Chelsea Arsenal manchest United Man City Liverpool and the media’s focus is spread pretty evenly

Between them in Germany B is the only story in town and everybody else is kind of item seven on the news headlines that’s kind of what like javi’s talking about in Spain and people talk about real as well is that the pressure on these massive super clubs is enormous

Cuz they are the football teams in the league right so that’s the kind of conjugate of Bayern Munich if you go they got consider all that but you could go there for two three years and get spat out but why doesn’t he just stay by

Lusin he’s got a good thing going he has a great team that he can build on with his own style and there’s no real pressure cuz uh bay lusen shouldn’t be where they are at the moment um so there’s room to learn there as well and keep developing his style and really

Work at what he wants to do you can’t really play with tactical Styles and things you think might work at a super Club because if it goes wrong then you’re out the cons of by labus though obviously is that right now they are overachieving so they are way performing

Way above expectations it’s probably going to regress to the mean and also all those players are doing so well for them are probably going to get sold um probably to Bayern Munich and also the other con of lusin is that Bayern just dominate The League anyway yeah so if

You don’t go now you only get a certain amount of time at these clubs like lus when your reputation is really high to capitalize on that you had your historic moment if you wait until next summer do you still have the same number of options well if he stays

And it’s not as good next season and they finish maybe third or fourth is it that impressive anymore so you want to keep your reputation really high and make sure you can go to other jobs afterwards but there’s lots of cons and Pros to both and that’s what he’s going

To inherit wherever he goes I think the last one is is a really good point as well John about like explaining why short-term thinking is important because obviously Alonzo will be thinking about his career longer term as well but there’s a scenario where he might not

Even be able to make the a decision with the options he has this summer next summer if he would stay yeah the long term is completely tied up with the short term particularly in the modern game because I think if you’re going to have a a decent chunk of a career at any

Club now you have to hit the ground running there’s so few particularly Elite clubs who are going to be patient with a manager for for long enough for them to actually become good so I think that yeah the it’s it’s important for him to focus on the short term when he’s

Considering his long long-term options because we we have seen managers fail on on that front before there’s plenty of coaches who have um who have started out badly and not gone on to to be remembered I think the classic example here is probably Mel artetta right he’ve

Starts out quite badly and you know there’s a a possible world out there where aeta gets fired by Arsenal before he can hit the heights that he’s hitting at the moment but there’s I guess closer to home and donola at the beginning of this season in the Premier League had

Nine games where where Bournemouth were really underperforming and there was talk of him getting sacked at that point and then they went on a really incredible run now people are talking about him as one of the exciting managers in the Premier League league so again short-term impacts definitely play

Into the longer term prospects of of coaches as well I’ve actually mapped out what it might look like for Alonzo in his entire career as you can see in this comprehensive pipe chart uh very clear to follow easy to follow I would say talk us through this J well depending on

Where he starts off he’s got different career options that all should end with being the best manager ever because that’s probably what presumably what he wants to do right that’s everyone’s ambition everyone so if you go to Bayern you win stuff you escape cuz it’s two or

Three years and you tell you go to Liverpool then you can build for longer cuz you can last longer at Liverpool they give you about 5 to six years then you go to Real Madrid he’ll want to do that as well at some point the biggest club in the world we escape national

Team then you become the best manager in the world but if you fail at one of these like Bayern Munich you get put into this uh randomizer here where you start getting put into other clubs where you get stuck in this little circle maybe you’ll have success and go to a

Team like Real Madrid who wants someone at the time but generally you need to take advantage of yourself at the highest reputation Point otherwise you might not get to have fun and become the best manager ever and instead be stuck in this bit which is where everyone else

Tends to live and what it is in that bit in the middle you’ve got to find a Revival project to to move that blocker back up to where lausen were to get back into the it’s like a pinball machine it’s exactly right and if you study this you’ll see that there it’s absolutely

Perfect and there’s no flaws in it yeah I like to read it from the bottom to the top so you start with the best manager ever and you can’t ever not end up at Alonzo so that’s quite good isn’t it yeah look at that flipping the narrative

Around there well done well done I mean JJ me mentioned this before Seb Stafford blw uh but replacing a very successful long-term manager at a Super League Level Club it’s no mean feat is it so if we were to assume for a moment that Liverpool does interest Alonzo as an

Option what do you think are some of the immediate challenges of of I mean I’m thinking of David Moyes you think of David Moyes but actually this is a problem which presents in several different ways Jo so I’ve got four examples of how Legacy managers were replaced and it went wrong afterwards so

Moyes is a great example and everyone knows that so so you’ve got the loadbearing central figure of Ferguson who was really became the definition of the club um by the time he retired and then you replace that with an employee who who isn’t ever going to fill that

Kind of space he’s not going to spread out into the different areas and the vacuums so what you end up having to do is you’ve got your manager and then you have to build a technical structure around him once he’s in situ to replace what you’ve lost and that’s kind of the

Classic problem but there are loads of others so um probably the other great long-term manager of the premier leag was a venger at Arsenal and when he left obviously Wenger a great romantic of the game had a belief system that he would never waver from to a fault obviously in

The eyes of a lot of Arsenal fans unai emry comes in to replace him and emy’s a Em’s a technocrat a very very good coach he’s been very very successful in his own right but then when he came in instead of kind of the sort of the

Romantic side of the game he tried to force on his players more technical analysis and so what you’d hear in the media were kind of leak stories about oh God we’ve had to sit through five 5 hours of video analysis and we’re bored and you know you’re trying to coach a

Group of players that got used to one approach and then you know had to had to adapt and where’s wenger’s poetry gone where has all the Poetry gone situation three so bit more abstract and tenuous here but um Martino at Spurs so had a had a very kind of altruistic approach

To Squad Harmony and and was very sociable with his players and if if you hear a lot of them talk about him it’s like they’re describing a father or an uncle or or brother a young paternal figure a little bit yeah and so when when poino goes he’s succeeded by

Mourinho who historically and to this day is much more confrontational so Mourinho wants to to provoke Improvement by prodding players and poking them and kind of finding weaknesses and curing them a different kind of family figure very much and and the result and consequence of that for a club is

Because you’ve got all these players who are sort of loyal and used to one style of management you have to kind of replace all of them really you have to get rid of your core and most clubs and Liverpool probably fall into this category you don’t have the cash to make

That kind of that scale of change yeah and lastly last one is an interesting one so Pep Guardiola at Barcelona when he left and he was replaced by Carlo angelotti are very much in the kind of the Niko kovat um uh style of biom Munich successes so you you go from

Guardiola’s incredible attention to detail and almost like micromanaging like uh insatiable desire to control everything that’s going on at the football club all at the same time to LTE who’s a much more laidback character and so when you have a group of players who are used to one thing

Again suddenly they start to to to to miss the lack of control and and the environment starts to feel loose and generally speaking almost always performance suffers yeah I mean I suppose the question in this specific instances whether Alonzo could buck that Trend at Liverpool and and we we we discussed

This earlier as a that Trend almost feeling as though if a manager is very successful and is at a Super League Level Club for a long time it’s almost inevitable that they will draw more power to their role over that long period they probably outlive other people you know senior members of the

Club too and inevitably like you mentioned before you have a younger manager or a less experienced manager or any manager come and replace them they they’re more of an employee they can’t possibly fill that void so it could just be that this is always doomed to fail I

Suppose the question then is with specifically with Alonzo C can he buck that historical Trend gu guide us through this conversation it’s it’s a really good question because it’s it’s it’s not the case that it’s just not possible um and I think there again like there are four areas which you know four

Main pitfalls that he faces four four challenges he’s going to overcome the first obviously he’d be walking into a very strong Premier League so you got three title challenges but also outside of that you got an awful lot of very well money contenders for champ League champions league places so like for

Instance Johnny like you if you had a slow start which he did at leusen um it’s not like in the Bundesliga where you can kind of have a soft Landing in third or or fourth you’re going to fall behind not just you know Manchester City and Arsenal but potentially asona Spurs

Man united a resurgent Chelsea all of these teams are in the conversation you could find yourself in seventh yeah it’ be very very difficult yeah if you’ve got three challenging teams for Premier League for the premier league title that means you’ve probably only got one or two spots open for Champions League and

Then good good contenders there as well absolutely and what we’ve seen historically is the Premier League really punishes down years for good teams you find yourself in Chelsea’s situation or Manchester United’s really drift um the second thing is communication like they’re very different people Alonzo is very authorative on the training ground he’s

A he’s a real Statesman of the game speaks a million languages perfectly so he’s a really good communicator but not in the Klo sense which kind of builds this um kind of fraternal atmosphere around a football club and and um in raptures fans it’s not quite the same

And so you can imagine for instance like you remember like the the atmosphere of anfield what for you know big European games or those big games against Guardiola City do you remember like how frenzy that all was like he almost makes it like a 12th man he he he does indeed

But this is what he talked about when he got the job he wanted to to um to animate the the anfield atmosphere and he did that Al Ono not quite the same guy I that’s really important I think he does represent a lot of what that city

Is doesn’t he nail on the head Ro because also a forgotten thing is like how similar Dortmund and Liverpool are as places in cities like there are differences but in terms of kind of what’s important to people and the history of the place there are similarities klopp knows how to deal

With that but he’s almost like the lead fan of Liverpool absolutely and and rightly so like because he has that connection with supporters so alono not to say won’t have it but it’s a variable isn’t it I think it’s quite interesting because I think what you’re looking for

In coaches is is leadership right and you know tacticians like myself might might downplay that but a big part of why Jurgen klopp’s been so successful has been his leadership now that’s not to say that jab Alonzo isn’t the leader also he clearly is but that leadership

Is very different it’s it’s based around almost like a quiet confidence that he is in the place where he belongs to to to be he’s been his whole life in those kind of places before he knows how to behave in those places that will give the players a confidence themselves but

It is a very different type of leadership from what jogen klopp has been I mean speaking of places as well I can see your third Point here you’ve kindly written it down for me SE lack of footballing structure John uh at Liverpool relative to to Bayern Munich

That might be difficult for him as well yeah but we mentioned it before particularly with respects to Ferguson when you have these Dynasty managers they end up right at the top of the pile and they everything sort of flows out of them and you could make the argument

Actually um Yogen Club leaving now is is pretty good for Liverpool because they were in danger of becoming that kind of Club where it was way too topheavy but that does mean that with Alonzo coming in from um a club which is very well structured into a club where maybe

They’re going to be working on some of the the structures behind the scenes particularly in terms of Recruitment and um in in terms of the um the the data side of things as well could be pretty tricky for him to actually have to work through some of the Growing Pains of

Those of those developments something interesting I I saw in the summer was um I went to the leveron training camp in in South Feldon in in Austria and after each session they held alono um had a little chat with Fernando Caris chief executive and Simon rools the the board

Director for sport and it’s very interesting how like entwined all those characters are and how cohesive the relationship is and I I really think that’s that’s going to be important so and that’s another point of comparison Joe because you’ve got a bay Munich uh bay Munich have kind of rejigged their

Structure so Krystal fre has come in as sporting director above him maxabel who um had a very unhappy year at leig um but was previously long-term sporting director at bristy mention gladbach he’s just started work a couple of weeks ago so they have this structure with a with

A with a vacancy a hole for a manager just to be dropped in Liverpool feels a bit more fluid so over the past couple of years Michael Edwards Long Gone obviously the sporting director who um was considered one of the The Architects of the the successful Premier League

European Cup Winning Side um he’s gone Julian Ward who was supposed to be his replacement didn’t last very long he’s gone York schakka uh he left at the beginning of the year in January he was there for a very short period of time do

You cycle through a lot of guys a lot of philosophies a lot of different um instincts about how you should progress and you’re looking at Liverpool summer where they’ve been connected with Richard Hughes who uh was the bourma sporting director Tim schen who worked currently for West Ham who’s previously

Worked under Simon rols at lusen it’s all a bit uncertain and so if you’re a coach you’re going into a position potentially where you’re not really appointed by the people who you work with you don’t maybe know who the people you’re going to work with are and it’s

Going to be kind of built around you that’s a little bit not of a red flag that but that’s a that’s an inconvenience and that’s one of the the biggest things that United got wrong with the Moy thing was the recruitment obviously you know like David Gil um

Left at exactly the same time right but if you look at the recruitment that man united had after when Moy came in he sign Fellaini like the last day of the window and stuff then the recruitment people always forget about that as well is that they Everton’s asking price for

Fellaini was lower at the beginning of the summer and then his his buyout Clause came into effect so not even just that they bought him right at the end but they paid more for him than they would have done if they bought him four weeks I mean the individual negotiations

Were poor and I mean I think everyone realizes that now especially in hindsight but the the actual recruitment the players they brought in didn’t suit anyone there was no cohesion um and it points to the same thing like with when vanger left Arsenal and when un came in then the recruitment wasn’t exactly

Perfect either going forward lack of cohesion and then you have um Liverpool now like Seb saying without that person in charge of it klopp’s mostly dealt with the transfers that’s come in it looks like so he’s built a team in His image and that’s one of the things he

Might have I to say that I mean Alonzo will be able to work with any group of players he inherits yeah I think he would and and this is there’s one more point which I think is probably equally true at both clubs in that you’ve got a really strong core in bayern’s case

Worked on the several managers and want a lot in Liverpool’s case I think the problem is a little bit more complex because you’ve got this big group who have not only won a lot with klopp but also have a kind of loyalty to him in the sense that his football and um the

Team that he built helped them to become individual stars in their own right so no one predates kpp in right EXA exactly that and but you think about the really big characters within it Virgil Van djk Muhammad Salah Andy Robertson Trent Alexander Arnold even guys like well

Allison the goalkeeper but canate yot um that’s difficult because you have that situation I think we can all relate to it it’s not a football thing you go in and you work under a new boss well that’s not the way it used to work I benefit I honestly think it would be

Benefit because you’d have that Core group of leaders already so like a lot of the stuff you have to do with motivation and Leadership is already the standards are already set on the training ground as long as they maintain that core and then build underneath you

Get three people to buy in the rest follow suit yeah exactly but do you remember that situation that always used to recur at Chelsea so you’d have kind of new managers coming in post Mourinho and it wasn’t quite right for C Lampard Terry drba and unless you can kind of

Convince them pretty quickly it goes wrong really quickly and so that’s it’s high it’s high stakes it really is it really is yes I think is what the big tactical problem that Liverpool have been trying to solve this season is how do you fit Trent Alexander and Muhammad

Salah into the same team um and you know with Salah getting older um I think this is just a really nice opportunity for Liverpool to say what do we want our football to look like in the future let’s bring in a manager who can build a team around Trent Alexander Arnold Okay

So we’ve talked about the teams in situ right now what about the longer term John yeah I think the really interesting thing about looking at managers who’ve had long dynastic careers at clubs the thing that unites them is that usually they have this a very clear tactical

Identity which they are able to instill in the clubs that they’re at and almost becomes part of the the club’s own identity so we’ve talked about Yogen klopp a lot we’ve also talked about Pep Guardiola both of those coaches have come in to their respective clubs with

Very clear tactical ideas and you know Jurgen klopp’s aggressive high- pressing direct football is now become synonymous with what Liverpool are Pep Guardiola similarly this sort of really patient positional game with cian influences with which has I guess leaned into this idea of like total control um that’s

What Manchester City are now so I think when we’re talking about the longer term impact of what of of of aabi Alonzo and maybe the clubs that he’ll work at we have to talk about what his tactical identity is and we we don’t have a huge

Amount of data to to Really base that on right because he’s he’s been at lusen for you know a season and a half he was in Youth systems in Spain before that um and I think when we talk about Alonzo it’s just and managers in general to be

Honest it’s so easy to fall into the Trap of saying what formation are they play yeah sh Alonzo is playing this this 343 that you can see on the board and this isn’t necessarily a particularly popular formation in World football certainly not at the highest level so a

Lot of people will say something like well how can this possibly work at Liverpool the Liverpool player 4 433 variant um so this this this won’t work but that is the kind of thing I would think and say exactly and um we should avoid that yeah thinking like you what I

Think is actually more important is the the principles that are underlying behind the the structures that he has in place so let’s talk a little bit about what he’s trying to do in possession with the ball now the basic thing with with in possession football is that you

Want to move the ball usually down the field into a more dangerous goal scoring situation that’s the very basic idea it’s part of the rules as well is effective tactic I would say that as well so what I’m going to talk about is sub principles here so I would say

There’s two very specific phases in what jabby Alonzo is trying to do with the ball and what distinguishes those two subphases is uh Tempo so what he’s wanting to do at the very beginning when he’s um when they’re building up from the back is they want to get control of

The ball they want to have the ball in such a way that they can then build an attack from it and the way that they do that is they implement the basic ideas that every modern coach is going to use when they’re trying to build up from the

Back what you want to do is you want to develop overloads so you have more players than the opposition because it’s easier to keep the ball that way the other thing you want to do is generate as much space as possible because the more space that you have um when you’re

Building up the harder it is for opposition players to to press you so what they do when they’re building out of the back actually they push Jeremy frong really high up the pitch Jeremy frong you’ll often see him almost playing like a striker galdo scored loads of goals and assists this season

They have yeah they’re really really important form of production for lus but what pushing FR pong forward does is it creates this now for kassu to move into basically a de facto fullback um you can then split your two center backs and let’s imagine that the opposition then

Are pressing out as uh out of a 442 shape like many Elite teams do what you’ve done here is you’ve fulfilled that first obligation of creating an overload because we’ve got the goalkeeper here uh two center backs up against that front two we can have either one of the the two sixes now

Dropping in to help out as well to exacerbate that overload you can have players dropping in as well to help out as well the other thing that it’s generated is width so we’ve got got galdo and kassu now playing really wide and this just creates more space so the

Opposition pressing have more space to cover makes it much harder to do and the whole idea of this then is for them to be able to generate controlled possession because when you’re kicking the ball off you don’t actually have um settled possession as we call it because

The opposition have a really nice chance to try and win the ball back which is why teams like to press high but because You’ got all of these advantages now in buildup the idea is that you can work the ball out the opposition can’t press you and you’re going to force them back

Deeper into their own half um through this nice controlled settle possession with your players all pushing up the field so that’s the first phase um and as I said the second phase is now um characterized by a change of tempo so nice and nice and patient buildup to get into these situations

Where you now have the ball and you can start thinking about how are we going to generate these more dangerous attacking moments and the way that they’re going to do that is by trying to work the ball through lines of pressure so you can see here in a 442 shape three lines of

Pressure what they’re going to try and do is get the ball into these kind of areas in front of the defense you got the attackers running towards um the the the opposition back line that’s really hard to defend and as you can see we’ve got players like floran Viet Hoffman can

Come inside because FR pong’s pushing up you now have lots of really exciting players in that kind of area so you want to try and get the ball to them but you also want to try and get the ball to them quite quickly because the quicker that you attack the more space there’s

Going to be if you are slow building up then everything is going to just compress down it’s going to be harder to break down that low block and the way that lusin are going to try and move the ball into these areas is by using what

We call Third Man combination so you see this happening a lot with with leus and what they’re going to do is they’re going to overload players particularly in the middle get all these players in into channels and they’re going to try and play quick passing movements to get

The ball through lines of pressure now the most simple Third Man combination is passing to one player who can then pass to another player but one of the other things that we see actually happening quite a lot with with lusin is they use a I guess you could call it an

ABAC um passing combination so a is the first player who passes it to B and he can do a bounce pass back and the idea here is that you’re drawing in opposition players to to respond to that first pass uh that ball gets played back and then you’ll have in this instance

Tap SOA then playing it through to plos you can then find the space in behind that’s been opened out here d d yes AB a a c d gold yeah go but now what you end up with is these really quick passing combinations short passing combinations of players all quite close together

Trying to find these channels where they can just work the ball through really quickly and that’s a that’s been a really generative way for them to actually create um really dangerous chances okay so what you’re saying then is that it’s not so much the formation that the team starts out as it’s these

Other specific principles that you think you would probably see at at Liverpool yeah so for example if you look at the structure we’ve got here in both of the phases of play we’re seeing basically a back four forming right with with with FR pal pushing forward so you could

There’s no reason why you couldn’t use the same principles that we’re talking about here which is slow buildup patient buildup control possession to then these more Dynamic quick passing plays um out of a back four system system so Liverpool play 433 system no reason why you couldn’t have the same principles

That play with that different structure so the important thing then is how do I fit the players into the best positions for them and then adopt the style of play and Bon could just say FR pong and galdo I was going to say any reason you

Can’t do it the same thing at Bayern uh yeah I mean Bayern have played the the 343 structure they actually played it against lus oh I just mean his principles as opposed to the formation yeah I think yeah Bayern well set to to play this kind of of football they have

The the really EXC in front four getting between the lines that’s how they play anyway um but I think yeah adding this more sort of control buildup with then the ability to change pace and Tempo quickly would work really well for them you know it’s really interesting to me

John do you remember when Thomas Miller had his rant after the lusin game he was talking about I didn’t understand anything he said but it was a lovely rant well basically to paraphrase he said one of the differences between us is lusan look like they’re having fun

When they play we’re so so structured and then the interviewer followed up by talking about how it was that Robert andrich uh crossed for y stanisich to score the first goal and it was kind of it looked very bad on TV stanisich was

In lows of P loads of space Sant is a a b munic player on loan so that didn’t help sure but he said well if you look back through lus season when have you ever seen that combination before and this for me felt like one of the key things it’s just it’s really

Unpredictable and this feels like why yeah absolutely and you know this is this is modern football now this is the way that things are moving there’s lots of criticisms that you know Europe football has become too rigid too too much based around the concept of control

To such an extent that teams are now able to prevent you know Manchester cities of this world from from being able to to score as easily as they might want to um this is a really nice way of overcoming that of introducing a bit more Tempo not worrying so much about

Complete control because the difference between labus here and man city is that man city aren’t wanting necessarily to always inject Pace into the the second and third phases of play they they they’re much happier just forcing the opposition back working the ball around the edge of into the box and creating in

That way so yeah this should be very encouraging for any elite team looking for a new coach because these are modern ideas and I think that you know you’ve got the the flexibility here as well to know that you don’t necess necessarily need to worry about what formation

Alonzo’s playing now you could probably import him into your club and he would make it work within the structure that you’re already playing to my simple mind it sounds kind of Liverpool I mean how do you answer the long-term question is in your mind is there a better long-term

Decision for him to make now I think moving to Bayern in the short term would be would be probably preferable for him because he already has the players to be able to do that I think at Liverpool Liverpool yes they are trying to play quite direct attacking football but they’re getting a

Lot of upside by being able to move the ball really quickly through the first phase I would say as much as the second and third phase that’s quite a change for them yeah which means that this first phase sort of a little bit more patience um would potentially require

Them to rethink what they’re doing a little bit again we talked about Trent Al Arnold before they use TR Alexander Arnold as a cheat code to be able to progress the ball without having necessarily super structured first phase possession so you could you could definitely fit Trent Alexander arold in

Somewhere else in that in that system but it’s not the way that Liverpool have been doing it so I think they would probably require a couple of transfer Windows maybe to bring in um the sorts of players that he would want to to be able to enact this system now what’s the

Best long-term decision for him if you had to pick between the three clubs I think he should go to Bayern for two years win a bunch of stuff and then uh he can go to Liverpool wherever he wants after because I think with uh Liverpool it’s unlikely you’d have someone who’s

There for five six years and then you get another manager straight after who does the same thing I think there’s probably a little bit period of transition and you could probably let someone else do that and also if he’s he’s quite young he’s like 42 I think

Alonzo so you go to Bayern now youve got the energy to deal with all that stuff and then you can do that and then go to Liverpool when you’re 44 45 and um and then have a bit of a longer time there maybe have build a bit of a a Alonzo

House yeah the house of Alonzo House of Alonzo yeah I mean you have the benefit of living in Germany can have you subsumed anything from the German public or indeed the German media about the the likelihood you would assume they think he’s going to buy in they’re very

Confident so I part of this goes through the lens of the German media only really being interested in Bayern so the idea that he might go to Liverpool is kind of over there somewhere sure um and yeah clearly it’s a very enticing Prospect marrying the best coach in the country

At the moment with um the most powerful side I’d like to see him stay at lusen just because I yeah because I I know about the the departures and the exits but lusen are built to renew themselves so they have Nathan terer or Ur who can potentially inherit a position from

Jeremy Fring pong um they haven’t really got the best of Amon adley yet and Adam hosek so I’d like to see him take this side into the champions league and see what happens next that would be really interesting it’s way more fun it’s way more fun you got to change it somehow

You can’t have the same forever yeah or becomes a super league this is what Club is built to do so let’s see it at its best I think that the in terms of his career he wants to be an elite coach right and I think that what we see from

Someone like Guardiola is he very clearly went to like Elite clubs very quickly made the right decision about how to develop as at an elite club he went from Barcelona to Bayern Munich because it gave him the space to be able to you know fit into another in another

Country but the same kind of Club where it’s where it’s really high power Alonzo’s in the same school I would say he’s going to want to actually go to a clubw and develop the ability to be an elite coach he has to do that somewhere and I think the options of Liverpool

Versus Bayern are very different in that respect with Bayern it’s you know he’s going to be given free reign to to develop the sort of football he wants to do with the sort of players who can play it and with a relative level of low risk as we’ talked about obviously the

Pressure is high but it’s it’s low risk with Liverpool it’s it’s a case of moving yes to an elite team but elite team who’ve been playing a very different type of football to a lot of other Elite teams um and with all of this uncertainty that we talked about in

Terms of you know you’re replacing a big coach they’re in the process of a rebuild I think it’s just a bit more risky I would love to see Alonzo go to Liverpool because I think it would be fun but I’m obviously not his career advisor I think if I were his career

Advisor I’d be saying go to Bayern spend two or three years there just learn how to work at a big club and then you know you can easily pick your Liverpool’s your Real Madrid’s later down the line well if you were his career advisor you’d be going home hungry because

You’ve just given the answer away for free haven’t you well I guess he should avoid Liverpool then according to everyone here how about that if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the athletic is home to some of the world’s best sports journalists including David orstein Amy Lawrence and

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