The tragedy of Xabi Alonso’s career in English football, if it can be described as such, is that it has come to be defined by a relentless, unyielding debate about his departure.
That this is the case says much about the internecine politics which was tearing Liverpool apart at the time and the refusal of some to let bygones be bygones. It also does a great disservice to a player who should be remembered for his brilliance while he was here, not which side anyone was on when he left.
Those in England, Germany and Spain who were fortunate enough to watch Alonso at close quarters and continue to cherish him as a footballer will today be reflecting on the announcement that he will retire at the end of this season with a mixture of delight at what they have seen and sorrow at what they are about to lose. Class is an overused word in the modern game, but in Alonso’s case it was never misplaced.
If his debut in English football was an eye-opener, a 1-0 defeat to Bolton Wanderers in which Sam Allardyce’s direct brand of football resulted in Sami Hyypia’s nose being broken by Kevin Davies’ elbow, his first home game was a personal triumph. Having watched bewildered as the ball flew over his head over and over again at the Reebok Stadium, Alonso demonstrated how it could and should be used at Anfield three weeks later, taking ownership of the centre circle and spraying passes to all corners of the ground. Liverpool’s opponents that day, Norwich City, were as befuddled by the midfielder’s brilliance as he has been by Bolton’s brutality.
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Summarising for Radio Norfolk, former Norwich player Neil Adams captured the mood of everyone at Anfield, stating that Alonso’s display was the best individual performance by a midfielder that he could remember seeing.
Norwich manager Nigel Worthington was similarly effusive. “Alonso was in a different class,” he said. “You would pay good money anywhere in the world to see top class performances like that.”
A standard had been set, a style had been established. But if those who were seeing Alonso for the first time were impressed to the point of being surprised, his new team mates were in no way taken aback by the quality of his work.
In the weeks leading up to the Norwich game sessions at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground regularly featured a soundtrack of oohs and aahs as players marvelled at the technical ability of Rafael Benitez’s first major signing for the club.
While Benitez himself was more guarded in his praise, describing Alonso as “a very clever player” and announcing himself satisfied at how quickly the 22-year-old had settled in, those who shared a pitch with him could not contain themselves. “I’ve never seen anyone pass the ball as well as Xabi,” said John Arne Riise. “It’s like watching another version of Stevie Gerrard. He is a great, great player. It’s amazing he’s only 22 and he may have cost £10m but he looks worth every penny of that.”
“I knew Xabi was a good player before he arrived from Real Sociedad in 2004, but when we did a passing exercise in the warm up of his very first session, just seeing Xabi pass a ball over 20 yards, with his effortless touch and technique, convinced me then that he was going to be a wonderful player for Liverpool and a dream team mate for me,” Gerrard later admitted.
His initial instincts were right. By the time Gerrard came to pen his autobiography more than a decade later, Gerrard named Alonso as one of the four best players he had played alongside for club and country. Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez and Wayne Rooney being the other three.
As is the way, comparisons with Liverpool greats from the past followed with the most convincing one being with Jan Molby and Alonso would later have his wish of meeting his predecessor granted thanks to the intervention of Guillem Balague, the Spanish journalist.
“If the most difficult thing in football is to score goals; the second-most difficult is to control games; and when you see somebody in football who can control games… well, it`s beautiful. That’s what you can do. It`s been a while since we’ve had the kind of midfield player you represent,” Molby told him.
But as much as he admired Molby and as much as that respect was reciprocated, Alonso’s real influence, the one individual who shaped his game most, was his father, Periko, a midfielder who won La Liga with Real Sociedad and Barcelona and 20 caps for Spain.
It was under his guidance that Alonso and his brother, Mikel, would spend countless hours practising their passing, long and short, developing skill games which would only be won when one or the other accumulated 2,000 points.
That competitiveness, desire to improve and technical excellence helped Alonso quickly come to be seen as one of the Premier League’s best foreign imports. If Gerrard was the heart of Liverpool and Jamie Carragher the soul, Alonso was the brains of a team which would win the Champions League in his first season in the English game.
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Little is left to be said about the glory that was Istanbul but even though Alonso was one of Liverpool’s heroes that night, pulling the scores level after his penalty had been saved, it was in Turin almost two months earlier that the Spain international made a mark that said most about him.
Protecting a 2-1 lead from the first leg, Liverpool went into the second of their quarter final with Juventus without Gerrard. Having suffered a fractured ankle at the start of the year, Alonso had been unable to play for 12 weeks and travelled to Italy with only 45 minutes of reserve team football under his belt. He had to play, there was no option, but the expectation that he would not be fit enough to complete the 90 minutes and the fear was that he might struggle.
In the event – and with Igor Biscan to the left of him, Antonio Nunez to the right and Milan Baros in front, Alonso controlled the game from start to finish. With Carragher also outstanding in defence and Benitez excelling tactically, Juventus were unable to lay a glove on them and a goalless draw kept Liverpool on the road to Istanbul.
By then, Alonso had established himself as, if not Liverpool’s best player given Gerrard’s presence, then arguably their most influential. Passing moves went through him, the tempo was dictated by him and the standards of his team mates were raised by his presence.
A team was developing, one that would not just hold its own in Europe, it would become one of the continent’s most powerful forces; while domestically, Liverpool, with their supporters crowing about having what they claimed was the best midfield in the world, with Alonso at its heart, became more consistent and more competitive.
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It wasn’t always plain sailing for Alonso at Liverpool, like most players he suffered dips in form, particularly when coming back from injury, but such was his quality that even when short of his imperious best he remained capable of dictating the flow of games.
It was during the 2008/09 season, with Javier Mascherano alongside and Gerrard and Torres in front, that Alonso’s influence was arguably at its strongest. As part of that foursome, his role was to ensure Gerarrd and Torres received the ball in the kind of space that they needed to cause most damage. Time and time again, he did so with the consummate ease which, by then, was also his trademark with Spain.
That Liverpool’s good thing with Alonso came to an end made pain and recriminations inevitable. In hindsight, his departure to Real Madrid was a fork in the road moment for the Merseyside club and they subsequently headed in the wrong direction.
“Players like Xabi are very rare. He was the team’s engine and you know that when you change an engine, it takes time to work again,” Torres later admitted.
It could be argued that even now, in the midst of a revival and a title challenge under Jurgen Klopp, that Liverpool’s engine is yet to work as it did when Alonso powered it. Not that that is a criticism of his successors, it is more a reflection of just how good he was.
It was in August 2009 at the luxury Rey Juan Carlos Hotel in Barcelona that Alonso’s Liverpool career began to move into the past tense. A £30 million offer from Real Madrid had been received which Alonso, by then determined to leave, and the club’s chief executive, under mounting financial pressure caused by the ruinous regime of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, wanted to accept. Benitez, though willing to allow Alonso to leave, wanted to hold out for more, with an asking price of £35 million hanging in the air and delaying the inevitable.
In the event, the deal was done. Real had a bargain and Liverpool were left with a hole that they could not fill. The debate over why Alonso was allowed to leave has raged ever since and while a personal view is that it happened due to a variety of push and pull factors that converged on one another – including, in no particular order, the breakdown in his relationship with Benitez, Liverpool’s perilous financial situation, Alonso’s own desire to return to Spain and the fact that it was Real Madrid – the strongest feeling almost eight years on is that Liverpool were lucky to have him.
Whatever the reasons for his departure, it is what Alonso did when he was at Liverpool that should prompt most discourse.
Players of his class come along all too rarely in English football, which makes his looming retirement all the more poignant for those who saw him in his prime. When he goes, he will take with him two Champions League winners medals, two European Championship winners medals, two Bundesliga winners medals and a winners medal apiece from La Liga and the World Cup.
He will also leave behind a multitude of memories that only a true great can bequeath.
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