Xabi Alonso's Leverkusen Tactics
in Football Manager 2024
Xabi Alonso epitomises football’s love affair with the fairytale of a ‘supercoach’.
Following a decorated career as a quintessential - refined and elegant - Spanish midfield metronome, at the heart of the World Cup and back-to-back European Championship-winning La Roja and a Champions League-winning Real Madrid galactico, Xabi Alonso’s ethereal career transitioned to managerial alchemy, transforming Bayer Leverkusen from ‘Neverkusen’ into Invincibles, and now back to Real Madrid as Head Coach.
Tactical Overview
Positional-Relationist balance
Collective expansive style
Controlled possession-football
High-intensity, high-energy pressing
Fluid 3-4-3
Transition to 3-2-5 attacking shape
Positionism vs Relationism
Xabi Alonso intersects the ‘positional’ ideology - born through ‘tiki taka’ and ‘juego de posicion’ - which has come to dominate European and World football, and the (re-)emergent ‘relationist’ approach central to the player-centric identity of Real Madrid, employed with great success by Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane.
Positional play describes a system-centric paradigm emphasising logical distribution of players across the pitch and rational occupation of space; players are part of a pre-defined system, and games are viewed as a chess-like contest between managers, which Pep Guardiola epitomises. Conversely, ‘relationism’ refers to a player-centric approach prioritizing player autonomy and symbiotic relationships between players.
Xabi Alonso intersects both positionism and relationism, having played for the Spanish national team at the apex of ‘tiki-taka’, and under Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich as well as more player-centric Real Madrid teams under Zinedine Zidane and Carlo Ancelotti.
At Leverkusen, Xabi Alonso has balanced a positional 3-4-3 transitioning to a 3-2-5 in attack with a degree of freedom and flexibility for his players. It will be interesting to follow whether Xabi Alonso retains these positional principles at Real Madrid - arguably not maximising strengths of Real Madrid squad - or becomes more relational, in line with Real Madrid’s tactical identity.
Collective Expansive Football
Xabi Alonso sets Leverkusen up to play collective, expansive football; best reflected in Football Manager 2024 through a Positive team mentality.
A Positive team mentality combined with Support / Defend duties ensures a balanced spread of Individual Mentalities across the team; the foundation of the collective, expansive football Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen play.
As with previous posts, “quotation marks” on the Attacking Midfielder individual mentality reflect what I suspect may be a long-standing interface issue in the FM Tactics Creator.
Individual mentalities of players in the attacking strata are often inflated, eg. Positive team mentality + Support duty = ..Very Attacking?
Obviously, it doesn’t make logical sense, but fortunately, an overly kamikaze it has never noticeably impacted my game-play.
Flexible Possession-football
Under Xabi Alonso, Bayer Leverkusen have controlled games using possession through short, low-tempo passing and playing out of defence, tapered with additional creative freedom.
High Intensity Pressing
Out-of-possession, Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen side play a high line, press, and counter-press aggressively in transition.
Transition to 3-2-5 Attacking Shape
Like many positional coaches - including Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta, and Xavi - Xabi Alonso used a 3-4-3 variant to impliment position play at Bayer Leverkusen.
3-4-3 is an effective formation for implimenting positional play because of the simple transition - via advancing wingbacks - to 3-2-5 in attack.
3-2-5 allows the team to attack through 5-channels, overwhelming opposition defenders, whilst having two midfielders controlling play and three defenders in a solid rest defence.
Player Instructions
Finally remembering to address the most commonly asked question of all, “PIs?”.
Attacking Midfielders roam from position
Wingbacks cross less often
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Hey, I’ve been reading your tactical write ups for a while them and have found them incredibly useful for learning about Football Manager and effective ways to play. I have implemented a lot of your tactics and principles, like the use of support duties and positive mentality for balance. with teams further down the table and have gotten fairly inconsistent results. Just wondering if you think whether this approach is an effective way to play with “underdog” teams or could it be tweaked in some way to be more effective for them. Or would it just be more useful to attempt a different approach altogether?