“Sometimes, opponents do the right thing”, Leverkusen boss Alonso speaks on team character

Bayer Leverkusen boss Xabi Alonso has said winning tough games and engineering a solid run this season have been because of his team’s spirit.

Leverkusen are top of the German Bundesliga with 16 points. They are in the quarterfinals of the Europa League, where they face West Ham on Thursday, and are one match-win away from the DFB Pokal title.

They are on an incredible 45-match unbeaten run but it hasn’t come easy.

Alonso and his charges have had to dig very deep to pocket maximum points in recent games, particularly against Hoffenheim two weeks ago – where they scored twice late in the game to prevail.

Answering a question from Omasports in a pre-match presser ahead of their Europa League tie with West Ham, Alonso said it’s never their desire to leave it late and hopes his side can wrap games up earlier.

“Our plans are not to wait till the last minute but it’s football and you have opponents,” the 42-year-old Spanish coach said. “Sometimes they do the right thing. But it’s important, not only for those games, but for many games during the season that we’ve had this mentality, this character to come back and not to give up in difficult situations and that says a lot about the team’s spirit. We want to keep having that belief and if we can win earlier, for sure I will be happy with that.

Alonso owes the character and strength that his team has built to the quality time they spend together and the kind of football they play.

“The team spirit is something that’s created by themselves, by the team. And to create that, luckily we have enough time to spend and to train and to give message and to have the hunger and wish to improve and to analyze. But that comes when you play good football and you have this discipline and this idea that you are on the right way.

“This is something the players have very clearly about how we want to do things and once we repeat that, we have the security that our moment will come. It’s come very often, but if it doesn’t we won’t change our ideas and that’s mainly because of the great belief that the players have and because they’re enjoying the situation and they want to keep going.

“We don’t take anything for granted, each game is a big challenge for us.”