Five games to rule Xabi Alonso out of being the next Liverpool manager

Xabi Alonso is the massive favourite to replace Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool manager. He’s going great guns at Bayer Leverkusen, knows the club, etc, etc.

We’ve already come up with five reasons Alonso would actually be terrible for Liverpool, and now we’ve come up with five games which could stop him moving to Anfield in the summer.

Bayern Munich vs Lazio

After consecutive defeats leave Bayern five points off the pace in the Bundesliga and facing a potential exit from the Champions League, having been dumped out of the DFB-Pokal by third-tier FC Saarbrucken in November, it’s no great surprise that Thomas Tuchel’s future is hanging by a thread.

Telling his players “you’re not as good as I thought”, as he did in the wake of their 1-0 defeat to Lazio in Rome, doesn’t suggest the dressing room is a hugely positive environment. Assuming Tuchel’s motivational tactics don’t improve between now and the second leg at the Allianz Arena, they’ll likely lose that one as well and Tuchel will definitely be sent packing. Bayern bosses simply don’t survive that.

At which point we, along with every other hit-hungry football website, will be obliged to prefix news regarding his exit with ‘Liverpool blow…’ or supplement it with ‘…and it’s bad news for Liverpool’, while the more risque may simply refer to it as ‘Liverpool news:…’ despite it not actually being about Liverpool, but about a manager vacating a job that the manager who Liverpool want, and by all accounts who wants Liverpool, may actually prefer.

Liverpool vs Sporting Lisbon

The first of three hypothetical games here, but there’s a reasonable chance Liverpool will play Sporting at some point in the Europa League, if not necessarily in the round of 16, which will very likely feature the Portuguese side after they beat Young Boys 3-1 away in the first leg of their play-off on Thursday.

Sporting boss Ruben Amorim features third in the next Manchester United manager list, sixth on Chelsea’s, fourth on Liverpool’s and if we were to guess we would say he would top of Tottenham’s and in the top five for both Arsenal and Manchester City. Essentially, everyone’s agreed that he’s pretty good.

And what better way to appeal to a club and its fans for Amorim than by demonstrating the excellent football he has his side playing against them? A manager capable of beating Klopp’s Liverpool on one of those ‘special European nights’ at Anfield is the best manager in the world.

Brighton vs Bayer Leverkusen

In what would turn into something of a last man standing, Royal Rumble of a Europa League, with the winner crowned manager of Liverpool, we’re assuming here that second favourite Roberto De Zerbi will already have seen off fourth favourite Amorim, who had of course already got the better of Klopp and thus third favourite Pep Lijnders, leaving De Zerbi to take on Alonso in a battle of the Klopp replacement titans in the final.

The Italian will be pinging on other radars this summer. Almost certainly Chelsea’s, because Brighton, while Erik ten Hag’s uncertain future could see Manchester United in the mix. But it would be quite the call for Liverpool to choose Alonso over De Zerbi if Brighton beat Leverkusen in the final, presumably having decided that ‘knowing the club’ is more important than having experience of managing in the Premier League, which is very different to when he left it as a player 15 years ago.

Real Madrid vs Manchester City

After a series of predictable Champions League ties with very little jeopardy, Real Madrid take on Manchester City in the final and beat them. Jude Bellingham probably does something ridiculous, or Pep Guardiola leaves Rodri out again – the details don’t matter. But the result means Carlo Ancelotti rides off into the sunset having won his fifth Champions League title, another La Liga to boot.

Alonso gets offered the biggest managerial job in world football, at a club he knows, like Bayern and Liverpool, and is told by Florentino Perez that he won’t only have Bellingham, Aurelien Tchouameni, Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo in his squad, but also Kylian Mbappe. Alonso takes that job.

Kevin De Bruyne runs with the ball for Manchester City against Real Madrid.

Liverpool vs Wolves

Sure, Klopp says there’s no chance he’ll change his mind, but if the Kop suck a couple of goals in off the right boot of substitute Darwin Nunez in injury time on the last day of the season to pip Manchester City to the title on goal difference then what’s he going to do? Just leave? Please.

It will be billed as the perfect ending and all that. But when handed the microphone for his post-match interviews, while champagne is sprayed around him and his name is sung from the terraces along with ‘four more years!’ like the Reds fans are MAGA supporters at a Trump rally, Klopp will surely be powerless against a call of the void-type urge when asked for his parting words: “I’m not leaving…. I’m not leaving… I’m not f***ing leaving!”