Former Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez has hailed Xabi Alonso, with the Spaniard the favourite to take over from Jurgen Klopp in the Anfield dugout.
Benitez led the Reds to winning the 2005 Champions League and the 2006 FA Cup, with Alonso starting both games. The former midfielder is now earning rave reviews for his work at Bayer Leverkusen, who lead the Bundesliga by five points having not yet lost a game.
His job at the BayArena has led to links with a return to Liverpool, with Klopp departing in the summer. Such a move would likely prove popular with Benitez, who has made his admiration of his former player clear.
Benitez was Alonso's manager for five years at the Reds, before both departed Anfield. While they are not in contact, Benitez has been keeping tabs on Alonso's progress at Leverkusen.
"When he took over last season, they needed to play a lot on the counter-attack. Now they have a team which is more of a protagonist, with a lot of pace, a lot of fast attacking. He is doing very good work," he told The Athletic.
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"Xabi has been at good teams with good coaches. He is intelligent. He has picked up different things from all his coaches. There is a lot of noise around Xabi Alonso at the moment, but there are lots of other good coaches not so much in the media spotlight.
"Teams have to choose not what is trending on social media, but the characteristics they need and the stability and path they want for their team. You have to know the possibility of improving where you are or growing with a new project."
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Alonso has received the backing of former Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez (Getty Images)Benitez's backing comes the day after Alonso was branded the "stand-out" manager of his generation by Klopp himself. The current Liverpool boss is clearly a huge fan of Alonso, who is the leading frontrunner to replace him.
“Xabi is doing an incredible job,” said the Reds boss. “If there were not the rumours around, that’s completely independent, if you had asked me eight weeks ago about Xabi Alonso, I would have gone ‘Oh my God’.
“The dinosaurs if you want, Ancelotti, Mourinho, Guardiola, maybe me, we will not do it - OK maybe Mourinho - but all the rest of us will not do it for the next 20 years. The next generation is already there and I would say Xabi is the stand-out in that department.
“How quickly his team is that well-tuned, that impresses me. For the time it’s taken, he’s put his proper stamp on it. Nobody knows if that’s always the way he wants to play or if it’s the way this team specifically plays.
"He’s not long enough in the business to tell, but obviously the coaching part is exceptional. That’s clear. The football he’s playing, the teams he sets up, the transfers he did, it was all absolutely exceptional.”
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