He is no longer a player, but a coach, but on Saturday afternoon one would have liked to have seen Xabi Alonso’s performance data that is collected from players in top football. He constantly paced through the coaching zone designated for Bayer Leverkusen in the Augsburg Arena, he shuttled between the fourth official and the linesman several times to lodge his complaint about an offside decision against his team.
He adopted creative gymnastic postures, and at the end he sprinted onto the grass with cheering poses. “It was emotional,” said the 42-year-old Bayer Leverkusen coach, “I jumped a little.” The man who triggered these emotional waves in him was his midfielder Exequiel Palacios. The Argentine scored the goal in the fourth minute of stoppage time that meant so much for the leaders of the Bundesliga: Bayer are now officially champions of the first half of the season thanks to the 1-0 win in Augsburg.
The team showed that it can win games with the level of toughness that is actually the hallmark of FC Bayern Munich, who have been pushed into the role of pursuers this season, and survived the match day unscathed, which was the most demanding in terms of the personnel constellation.
Three players – Tapsoba, Koussounou and Adli – had to be released for the Africa Cup, and Bayer’s top goalscorer Victor Boniface was injured in preparation for the tournament with Nigeria. Florian Wirtz, the outstanding talent, was injured and therefore not a candidate for the starting eleven in Xabi Alonso’s eyes. Wirtz only came into the game after an hour and his substitution was the only one the coach made. Things have become manageable in the Leverkusen professional squad.
Mentor Xabi Alonso
It is all the more important that those who have had their share of 25 games without defeat – including all competitions – but have received less attention than Wirtz, Boniface, the strategist Granit Xhaka or the outside players Alejandro Grimaldo and Jeremy Frimpong are now stepping forward. Ezequiel Palacios is the prototype of these players: although the only reigning world champion in the Bundesliga, he runs a little under the radar, but is quietly indispensable.
Bayer Leverkusen has always been said to have good luck in selecting its South American workforce. Palacios has been at the club for four years, he is now 25, and a transfer fee of 17 million euros was paid to River Plate Buenos Aires. Palacios’ length of stay shows that he is integrated and that people are happy with him. On the other hand, the promise that can be derived from its possibilities is not yet fully fulfilled. But Palacios’ career at Leverkusen has shown an upswing since Xabi Alonso became his coach in late autumn 2022.
Two people came together who not only spoke the same language. The position and role that Alonso played and Palacios also creates a connection. Central midfield, metronome of the game. The World Cup in Qatar inspired Palacios; he had a short appearance in the preliminary round, the round of 16 and the semi-finals. He wasn’t the decisive player, but he was part of the gang around Lionel Messi. Back in Germany, under the guidance of his mentor Alonso, he resisted the temptation to “relax myself with the greatest success one can achieve”.
The game in Augsburg was one in which Exequiel Palacios showed his strength. Bayer’s sporting director Simon Rolfes described the Argentine’s game: “He tried to give him the rhythm, to dominate it. He got closer and closer to the gate. And he’s someone who gives it his all until the referee blows his whistle.” They call Palacios “Pala” in Leverkusen, and Rolfes raves about the technical possibilities of “Pala” when he “receives the ball fantastically” in one of the last actions in Augsburg and with the next movement he goes in with the other foot.”
Goals that are worth points
Bayer’s approach against FC Augsburg, who defended deeply, was to play until “a gap opens up in the opponent’s defense and a situation can arise that they can no longer defend.” For Xabi Alonso, Palacios’ goal was less luck than “the reward” for a superiority in play, which was expressed in 12-0 corners – as an away team.
Goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky thought a late 1-0 “tasted much better than a 3-0 or 4-0”. He has been playing in Leverkusen for so long that he is credible as a club chronicler. After thinking about it for a while (“That must have been three years ago”), he came up with a fresh example of a comparable game: On matchday 4 in Munich against Bayern, the longed-for goal was scored in the aforementioned 94th minute, just like in Augsburg 2-2, which is why Leverkusen is still undefeated. Successful with a penalty: Exequiel Palacios. Two of his three Bundesliga goals this season were measurably good for points.
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“It would have been a good game for us if it had ended 0-0,” said Lukas Hradecky, “but it creates even more self-confidence to land such a win at the beginning of the year. We stayed cool, stuck to the routine – that’s a quality that occasionally brings late victories. The success has created something in the team, a hunger for more, and it has to stay that way.”