Xabi Alonso has Real Sociedad’s B team top of the league and playing football
Hometown hero Xabi Alonso has Real Sociedad’s B team top of the league and playing football with flair… after an apprenticeship with Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich, the self-confident rookie boss already looks destined for the dugout on the big stage
- Xabi Alonso into second year as Real Sociedad B boss and he’s made big impact
- The former midfielder is following in footsteps of his former boss Pep Guardiola
- After three games Real Sociedad B are top of league with maximum nine points
- He is his own man with the team having Xabi’s mark with added flair encouraged
Xabi Alonso never made a secret of the fact that his move to Bayern Munich in 2014 was influenced, not just by a desire to play for another top European club after Liverpool and Real Madrid, but by the opportunity to do a football management Masters under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola.
Three years on from his last game for the German club, Alonso is following in Guardiola’s footsteps, back at his home-town club, quietly molding a youth team in his image in the lower reaches of Spanish football.
Guardiola did it for a year in the fourth tier with Barcelona‘s B team. Alonso is trying to get Real Sociedad from the third to the second tier. He is now into his second year in the job and he has made an extraordinary impact.
Xabi Alonso (L) into second year as Real Sociedad B boss and he’s made extraordinary impact
Alonso did a football management Masters under tutelage of Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich
Three years on from his last game for German club, Alonso is following in Guardiola’s footsteps
Last year the team missed out on the play-offs but such was the form of so many of Alonso’s young players that several took a step up to the first team this season. Real Sociedad started this campaign with no fewer than 16 players in the first-team squad who had come through the club’s own youth academy. It was more than any other side in LaLiga.
That created a potential problem for Alonso. With so many stepping up he would be deprived of talent that last season he would have been able to call upon. It does not seem to have bothered the 38-year-old. After three games Real Sociedad B, ‘Sanse’ as they are known, are top of their league with a maximum nine points.
They beat SD Leioa 1-0 at their Zubieta training ground on the opening day with the impressive attacking midfielder Robert Navarro scoring the winning penalty.
CD Laredo were their next victims, and at the weekend they beat Barakaldo 4-1. Xabi, still unmistakable with the same square jaw of stubble and serious expression, watches the progress from the sidelines well aware that the whispers around his progress are increasing in volume with every passing matchday.
The expectation is that he will eventually take the first team job – that has been the natural next step before at Real Sociead.
The current first…
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