In the end, Xabi Alonso looked like he wished he was anywhere but Anfield. He had enjoyed being back in Liverpool, seeing some familiar faces, taking a mid-morning run through the city, past his old apartment at Albert Dock and some of his favourite haunts, but this became an unhappy reunion for the Bayer Leverkusen coach, suffering a rare — and emphatic — defeat at the hands of his former club.
By the time the Liverpool fans began serenading Alonso with a couple of minutes of this Champions League match remaining, his team were 3-0 down and heading for just their third loss in 69 matches in all competitions since the start of last season.
A fourth goal followed, Luis Diaz completing his hat-trick in stoppage time, and Alonso spoke of heading down the tunnel with a “bitter feeling” that made it hard to appreciate fully the warmth of the home crowd’s ovation.
This wasn’t Alonso’s night. Instead, it was another powerful illustration of Liverpool’s soaring confidence under the man in the opposite dugout.
Arne Slot doesn’t have Alonso’s Liverpool backstory. Nor does the former Feyenoord coach have the box-office presence of his predecessor Jurgen Klopp.
Slot was by no means the “sexy” or obvious choice for the job when he was proposed by Liverpool’s incoming sporting director Richard Hughes as the outstanding candidate to follow Klopp, but it is now 14 wins, one draw and just one defeat in 16 matches. Liverpool are top of the Premier League and now top of the Champions League standings. Beating the German champions 4-0 is another significant statement of intent.
It is barely three weeks since Slot politely acknowledged the suggestion that Liverpool, having won eight of his first nine games in charge, were about to face a series of tougher examinations. Since then, they have beaten Chelsea, RB Leizpig, Brighton & Hove Albion (twice) and now Leverkusen and earned a creditable 2-2 draw at Arsenal.
The big tests keep coming — Aston Villa, Real Madrid and Manchester City are the next three visitors to Anfield — but for now Slot keeps finding the answers. And what is striking, as well as the results, is how Liverpool are demonstrating different qualities and finding different ways to win matches.
“I think they are a complete team,” Alonso said in his post-match news conference when asked about his former club. “They are able to defend, to score, they have power in both boxes, they can keep clean sheets and they are able to score with not many chances. That is a great strength in the Champions League, especially in the next round.”
Alonso emphasised that these are still early days in the campaign, but few will quibble with his suggestion that Slot is “doing great work so far”. What threatened to be a difficult transition, adjusting to a new manager after almost nine years of Klopp, has so far been unexpectedly smooth.
The past few days have brought contrasting assignments against two opponents that Slot felt were equipped to cause his team problems. Brighton certainly did so at times on Saturday, threatening to build on an early lead, and Leverkusen posed an interesting tactical challenge on Tuesday — “overloading the midfield”, as Slot put it, and making light of Liverpool’s attempts to press them.
The deployment of Diaz was fascinating. Slot played him in a less familiar central role in the front three, at times leading the line but at times dropping deeper to receive the ball. The coach explained that playing a more orthodox centre-forward, like Darwin Nunez, would have played into the hands of Jonathan Tah, “maybe the best defender in Germany”, “so we thought let’s try to get Lucho (Diaz) to drop into midfield and maybe surprise him with more runs from behind”.
Liverpool v Leverkusen = The Luis Diaz Show ✨
All three goals from the Colombian in their 4-0 victory… ⚽️⚽️⚽️#UCLonPrime pic.twitter.com/fqh6uW0aQq
— Amazon Prime Video Sport (@primevideosport) November 5, 2024
There were not too many surprises from either side in the first half but, as against Brighton on Saturday, Slot’s team went up a gear after half-time. How satisfying it must be for a coach when the two players he brings into the starting line-up combine as slickly as they did for the opening goal here, Curtis Jones drifting into space and playing a precise pass that Diaz converted with a sumptuous dink over Lukas Hradecky.
A second goal followed, with Liverpool thankful for the VAR intervention after Cody Gakpo was initially flagged offside when he met Mohamed Salah’s teasing cross with a bullet header, and at that point Alonso began to get a sinking feeling. “Receiving (conceding) the second goal two minutes later was tough,” the Leverkusen coach said. “We weren’t able to recover from this.”
Diaz was suddenly having the time of his life, adding two more goals in the closing stages to take his tally to the season to nine in 15 appearances. A sporadic goalscorer since joining Liverpool from Porto in January 2022, he seemed to lose all composure when the stakes were raised in the final weeks of last term, but he looks so much more confident right now.
He is not the only one. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Ibrahima Konate are defending with a rigour that was not always apparent last season, Ryan Gravenberch appears so much more at home in midfield and Jones is relishing a little more creative freedom. Salah scored 25 goals in all competitions last season, but he too seems to have gone up a level in terms of all-round contribution.
The big concern among Liverpool’s fans was that any incoming manager might struggle to match Klopp in the inspiration stakes, but Slot has quietly made his presence felt and got his ideas across.
Might Alonso regret the road not taken? Unlikely. Even if this is shaping into a more challenging season at Leverkusen — fourth in the Bundesliga at present, with Bayern Munich intent on the resumption of normal service — the 42-year-old’s stock remains extremely high. If another of his former clubs, Real Madrid, fancy a change of direction at the end of this season, or even when Carlo Ancelotti’s contract expires in 2026, Alonso is firmly expected to be the leading contender.
Liverpool was never a realistic option for him last spring — focused, as he was, on what he referred to as “a big thing”, i.e. leading Leverkusen to the first Bundesliga title in their history and taking them into the Champions League this season. Even before his agent made clear to Liverpool that he would not be a candidate to succeed Klopp, the Merseyside club’s hierarchy knew it was a non-starter.
But it was not just the shadow of Klopp that hung over Slot at the start of the season. There was also the shadow of Alonso, a former Liverpool favourite who has made an outstanding impression in his first senior coaching role. Had Slot not made such a strong start to life on Merseyside, it is quite possible the sight of Alonso in the opposition dugout might have brought an unwelcome spotlight.
As it transpires, though, Liverpool are thriving under Slot. Alonso did his best to enjoy the experience, catching up with his old team-mate Luis Garcia, who was here on TV duty, and even touching the “This is Anfield” sign in the tunnel, but he knows how difficult a Champions League night can be for visiting players when they come here.
He said beforehand there would be times when his players would be required to hold their nerve “against a top, top team” in a challenging atmosphere. He felt disappointed they did not handle that test better in the second half.
Only in the final minutes, with the game won, did the Liverpool supporters turn their minds to serenading their old midfield hero, but only after they had sung Slot’s name. Life after Klopp — life under Slot — could not be going better.
(Top photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
