Xabi Alonso inspires Bayer Leverkusen revival as they face Europa League test

After barely six months in his first job as head coach of a top division club, it is still accurate to call Xabi Alonso a novice in the profession.

But ask around the managers who knew him as a player and they would tell you he’s been practising the role for 20 years.

“He saw himself as a coach when he was on the pitch,” Jose Mourinho said of the former midfielder, a pillar of the Portuguese manager’s Real Madrid a dozen years ago.

“I would predict him being successful as a manager anywhere,” added Pep Guardiola, who built strategy around Xabi when he was head coach of Bayern Munich.

Quite whether Guardiola would have forecast the extent of the Xabi effect on Bayer Leverkusen, who appointed the 41-year-old in early October, is moot. He came to a club in deep crisis, one place off the bottom of the Bundesliga.

They had lost two of their three Champions League group matches. A 4-0 defeat to Bayern Munich would be the previous head coach Gerardo Seoane’s last domestic assignment.

The improvement since has been steep, almost a mirror image of the slump that opened up the vacancy.

For his first match in charge Xabi, whose apprenticeship in management was served coaching the B and academy teams at Real Sociedad, oversaw a 4-0 win over Schalke 04.

By the time the return fixture against Bayern came around last month, Leverkusen were soaring up the table. They beat Bayern 2-1, causing the latter to create a vacancy of their own by sacking Julian Nagelsmann.

On Thursday evening, Xabi sets his sights on a semi-final place in the Europa League, having steered Leverkusen into the competition by finishing third, above Atletico Madrid, in their tough Champions League group.

They travel to Union Saint-Gilloise, of Belgium, tied at 1-1