Xabi Alonso proud of Bayer Leverkusen after 0-0 draw: “We played almost perfectly.” | OneFootball

Bayer Leverkusen head coach Xabi Alonso’s post-match comments following his team’s 0-0 draw with Bayern Munich on Saturday conveyed one major point. Namely, that he was proud of his team for executing his well-thought-out match plan. B04 midfielder Granit Xhaka too expressed pride in the squad’s performance.

“We executed almost perfectly,” Alonso told Sky Germany. “We played in their half for almost the entire game. It’s not easy against Bayern.“

Xabi did concede that the result – which leaves the defending champions eight points behind the league leaders – “wasn’t enough for the table“, but wished to emphasise that Leverkusen’s title prospects had nothing to do with Saturday. Bayer, just like Bayern, have only lost once in the league this season.

The points gap owes everything to Leverkusen’s eight league draws this season. Alonso made reference to these, clearly thinking of instances in which the team dropped points against Holstein Kiel, Werder Bremen, Bochum, and Wolfsburg.

“The reason for that [the title-race] status, doesn’t have anything to do with tonight,” Xabi told Sky. “That’s because of a bunch of s***** draws we had. All of my players played at the very top level tonight.”

Asked whether his tactics on the evening might have functioned better with a true No. nine such as Patrik Schick or Victor Boniface up top, Xabi simply aid “maybe, but we’ll never know“. In any event, both Xabi and Xhaka emphasised that the season wasn’t over.

“That was an incredible performance,” Xhaka told Sky, “I can’t even remember Bayern getting a shot on target. To play like that against Bayern, with so much character, mentality and commitment means that we deserve a great deal of respect.

“We’re not interested in that [the table],” Xhaka added, “We weren’t interested in that last year and aren’t interested in that now. Whether we’re eight, five or 11 points behind Bayern, if we continue like this, we can be proud of ourselves.”

“The season’s not over,” Alonso said at the post-match press conference. “We can talk about April when we get to April.”

GGFN | Peter Weis