Topic: UEFA Europa League 2023/24 Season - page 50. (Read 58896 times)

The high expectation on Leverkusen made people putting blame on Alonso for the loss. I think it's an expression of disappointment that makes people find anyone to put the blame on. I think it's indeed unfair to blame Alonso when he was under his own pressure to stay in unbeaten record that forces himself pushing the limit on his team which cause mentally fatigue in the Europa League final.

Xabi Alonso has done a remarkable job to bring Leverkusen that far. They also played an attractive football which entertained the fans. Atalanta was also not a weak team, in fact their performance in the last several games showed that didn't have a big quality gap between them and Leverkusen. Gasperini has also coached Atalanta a quite longer than Alonso coached Leverkusen, therefore he knows more about the competitiveness between teams in european stage.

Everyone enjoys blaming, right? Blaming Xabi Alonso for Leverkusen's loss? Its stupid. He led a young team to the final. Very big. Did they choke? Maybe. Even world-class coaches have been there. Fergie lost to Mourinho? When Pep couldnt beat Tuchel? It happens.

Xabi kept Leverkusen playing their game, which brought them this far. Changing everything for final? Risky business. Despite his flaws, lets give him credit. Atalanta played well. Under pressed, they maintained calm. They deserved victory. Young Leverkusen has a lot of talent. Perhaps they need some seasoned veterans to guide them. Still, thats how you learn, right? You lose, learn, and recover. Winners do that.

Atalanta does not have as big a chance as Liverpool or Leverkusen, that is the narrative we are building throughout the Europa League, including before the final match takes place. However, beyond everyone's predictions, it turned out that they were able to prove that they could become champions and beat Leverkusen. and even the results of the match have an influence on some people's predictions for Champions League matches. Because some people believe that this season is a season where the club that is not the favorite can win, and they attribute this to one of the European League final matches.

Atalanta succeeded in making Leverkusen's strategy not work well, they were successful when defending and they were effective when attacking, that was the key to their success in this match. and on the other hand, Leverkusen conceded so easily and even when the match had not been long, Atalanta was able to score a goal.

Roma isn't such a team that will be considered a top team, even in their performance this season they were just average, tho they had what felt like a brilliant performance in the Europa this season, they were not still good enough when they had to face a tough team that has a form above average, so I just considered them as an average performing team and nothing to be seen as a really top team.

Leverkusen and Liverpool still remains the top team of the Europe league this season, even if they were unable to win the trophy, they were still the most rated, they only made little mistakes that cost them all the much they had to go through as a result but then I believe they will be doing better and that was why they were able to make it beyond the Europa league for next season and they now find their selves on bigger stage to play for the season. Well next season will be an opportunity for Roma to try attempting winning the Europa league title as they have desired in a long while.

Most of the top teams will be rather playing in the champions league but then it just feels like there's going to be some mores competition in the next season than the regular so Roma should expect surprises because it may come just like it did happened to Leverkusen and they didn't expect it till it happened. Atlanta for me were really lucky this season because the chances were more for Leverkusen but they were just lucky.

Nobody thought of Atalanta in the beginning of the league because we believe more in big clubs. Liverpool was doing perfectly OK in EPL, and Leverkusen was winning their matches and this was what made most people to see these two clubs as favorites. Atalanta was in Seria A and nobody will look up to them, because Roma is there and most people will even pick Roma instead of Atalanta.

However, this is football and we can only give our predictions on who will win the league but we cannot come to conclusion, because it is hard to predict the future since there will be some unforseen circumstances that will hinder our predictions from coming true due to natural phenomenon. Football is full of surprises and that is why no one can come to conclusion and beat his chest on his prediction coming true. Atalanta murdered the season, and I don't think I would love to predict who will be the winner of next season, until it competition starts.

At the start of the just concluded UEFA Europa League campaign, very few persons would've predicted that a certain Atalanta team from Italy will win the competition. At the beginning, we had the most successful club in the UEFA Europa League competition Sevilla and English club Liverpool who as we all know are very experienced in the European competitions. Then I nthe knockout stages of the competition, we learnt about Bayer Leverkusen who were tearing any team thy face apart, a team that were cruising through the season without conceding amy defeat. Roma also significantly improved after Daniele De Rossi took over the club's managerial position.
But in all of the This Gasperini's Atalanta were very focused and never allowed the intimidating stats of their opponents to stop them from playing at their best. Atalanta went on to defile all odds by eliminating Liverpool in the quarter finals and defeating bookmakers favorite team Bayer Leverkusen in the final.

Indeed, I am aware of that as well. The period when Liverpool/Leverkusen were widely expected to win the competition by so many members here but this was not even coming true. But these forecasts were not even coming to pass as Roma turned into the dark horse too but this club has ended on leverkusen's hand. I never saw Atalanta as the favorite to win the match but it was slowly but surely climbing up with perfect result. It looks like this is exclusive to the Europa League. With the manner the victor of the Europa League has always changed at this time compared to the UCL. UCL is far easier to predict than this league. It's not like UCL which will always be controlled by the best team like Real Madrid, which utterly dominated UCL by winning more trophies than any other club. In terms of precisely projecting which team will win the championship, the Europa League is on a different level considering how difficult to predict which team that would be winning the competition.
One team may always be expected another underdog to take home the Europa League trophy in the upcoming season. In contrast, the most costly club has been controlling UCL. Because the Europa League has produced so many surprises, watching it is now far more appealing for me to see that. This is my honest view to the europa league considering how competitive it is. .

Atalanta unexpectedly won the Europa League title this season. However, this team gave a lot of effort to win the Europa League title. The Atalanta team was not the favorite for the Europa League title. But it was not a weak team either. Atalanta qualified for the final with a good performance, and the team also performed well in the final match.

No word yet on which team will win the title next season. However, in every season of the Europa League, Roma team is considered as the favorite to win the title. And the Roma team also gives full effort to win the Europa League title. It remains to be seen how Roma will perform with De Rossi next season.

True, it will be a very valuable experience for Xabi Alonso when he has to accept defeat from the Serie A team, Atalanta, and makes him fail to become European League champion, as well as making him fail to win the treble winner this season. He will learn a lot from that defeat, because I believe he is a coach who is willing to learn from his failures. But on the other hand, that doesn't make his statistics bad for this full season.
Yes, next season will be a tougher challenge for him, because he will be at the highest level in European football, namely by being in the Champions League. He has to prove that he can compete there. And to be honest, I'm also really looking forward to that, because in the Champions League he will have a big chance to meet a team that is even greater than the team they faced this season. He has to prepare everything so that Leverkusen can have a lot to say in the Champions League next season.

Anything can happen, because in the European League the team that is considered the underdog is more dominant, but they can be successful. Whether it's because there is no motivation from the top teams or what, what is clear is that we see it that way. This season shows the same thing, the teams you mentioned actually had to be eliminated early, even though they were the team that were previously favorites to become champions in the European League. However, Atalanta, with all their existing abilities, managed to emerge as champions.

It's interesting to talk about Sevilla in the European League, because they are the team that dominates the European League with the title they have won. However, this season we can't see them here, because this season it could be said that they have completely failed to provide anything good. They are in the Champions League, and in the Champions League they were so disappointing that they only finished last in the group standings.

It was an unexpected season where top clubs like Leverkusen, Liverpool, Milan or Roma went home without winning the title and instead it was an underdog team like Atalanta who managed to win the European League title for this season. I'm curious what will happen next season considering there will be new entrants coming from various parts of the European competition.

Of the four top teams that I mentioned, only Roma will return to the European league and the rest will compete on the bigger stage of the Champions League. Is it possible that the underdog team will surprise again next season? remembering that everything is possible after seeing Atalanta this season and of course we won't see Sevilla either because they were knocked out last season and in the domestic league they finished in the bottom position.

He lacks of mentality combined with still have less experience in term of tactic compared to the gasperini. Look at when gasperini was surprisingly implementing man on man marking, it was totally reduce leverkusen's attacking line which was using the build up from the bottom. Lack of good players were also the main problems here.
Leverkusen didn't have creative attackers who can leave from being guarding by its opponent. Gasperini's strategy was really killing xabi's team in that game. No doubt that many people were calling him as a genius. Even though this is his first trophy since 7 years coached atalanta.
Gasperini deserved to be appreciated by a lot of people here. He has been doing great job by helping atalanta to get the europa league trophy.It helps atalanta plays in the UCL as well.

Yes, the moment that they can't turn around a game when they are behind was about to happen. They had a few games where they were behind and somehow managed to score a late equalizer or a winning goal, but every time I thought that this streak is coming to an end at some point. And against Atlanta it actually happened.

The loss of three goals in the final was a surprise for me. Leverkusen being favorite was because of their unbeaten performances, but both teams didn't have a big gap of quality. It's fair to say that Leverkusen might have underestimated Atalanta when Atalanta was actually a very good team with a very strong consistency in the last games at the time.

The late goals in several games that kept Leverkusen stayed unbeaten gave me impression that Leverkusen was not ready to play against a team that has ability to give a consistent fight throughout a ninety minutes display. This was what made Atalanta looked s strong in the final, when they were considered less favorite to win the trophy of Europa League.

The Europa League final was a big learning for them. It was a huge disappointment for sure, but I believe that Leverkusen might have underestimated a challenge for the first time. In every game they were on point and you could see that they don't underestimate their opponents.  But in this case I saw a game for the second time actually that they didn't do the job as well as they used to do it. First time was against Qarabag when they almost lost a game that they should never lose. They turned it around.

Against Atalanta though they had a team that knew how to defend a lead and how to play it till the end on the highest and most efficient level.

As a Coach it's fine to say he la k experience, but as a player I doubt if he's not experienced in finals, this is actually his first time as a coach and his first time getting to a finals aswell so that wouldn't be a big deal to consider, he did well too, as a first time coach, he was able to win one out of the two finals he played which is a fair performance as compared to loosing both finals even as an experienced coach.

Him underestimating Atalanta was because he saw it like one of the league games and may not have been expecting Atalanta would turn out that tough against tham so he may not have seen the need to fully engaged than to the point he ended up loosing the game against them. He would have been able to win that game if only he was able to ease the pressure on the players to deliver as a team, he was probably pressured as a coach too aswell as the players were probably under the pressure of getting to set the records and then he ended up loosing both the game and the record.

If he had focused more on just winning the game and not just the records, then he would have been able to get to win the trophy and aswell maintain the record too aswell which was one of their priority this season. By next season If he gets to any finals again, not minding the team involved, I'm sure he will be able to handle it much better than he had done this season.xabi still remains a good and very promising Coach.

Looking ahead to next season, Leverkusen's focus will be on the Champions League, where they aim to face and conquer the best clubs in Europe. While the competition is fierce and features stronger opponents like Real Madrid and Manchester City, Leverkusen has proven they can hold their ground against top teams. Under Alonso's guidance, Leverkusen will sure  approach each match with determination and tactics, hoping to advance continually in the tournament.

 Despite the challenges ahead, Leverkusen's consistency and resilience proves that significant changes may not be necessary for the upcoming season. With Alonso at the managers stand and a buoyant squad capable of competing at the highest level, Leverkusen will definitely continue to strive, hoping to realize their aspirations of Champions League glory and complete their status as a powerhouse in European football.

 Even though the huge loss of the UEL trophy, Leverkusen's performances overtime have been remarkable. However, the game of two nights ago gives them the importance of addressing weaknesses and staying vigilant, as other teams will undoubtedly take note of Atalanta's successful tactics and seek to exploit Leverkusen's vulnerabilities in future encounters. This loss serves as a learning experience, motivating Leverkusen to regroup, refine their strategies, and strive for even greater success in the seasons to come.

Of course, Xabi doesn't have a lot of experience in the European league, but he has shown that he succeeded in bringing Leverkusen into the final and becoming runners up. Of course, that has proven the best quality he has.
Apart from that, in terms of the changes that Xabi Alonso made to Leverkusen, it was certainly very successful because Leverkusen was previously a fairly weak team. But this season he succeeded in turning Leverkusen into a fairly strong team in the European league and also in the domestic league.

In setting the strategy, of course Xabi has succeeded in doing it, but I think he also needs to have more quality players to help him next season. A team that can be said to be strong, of course, must be able to prove it in the coming season because that is the true level of strength if they are able to maintain the stability of their game. Xabi can of course bring many trophies to Leverkusen provided that he must be fully supported by the management in the transfer market to recruit several players of the best quality.

Yes I agree with you that Xabi Alonso actually lack the big stage experience like the Europa league finally. But I don’t blame him too much because even the greatest managers with fast experience do loose whenever they switch off even small. My first example will be Alex Ferguson beaten by a young Jose Mourinho with Porto and also Guardiola beaten twice in the UCL final. And on both occasions the most experienced was Alex Ferguson. Gurdiola also lost to first timer Tuchel when Chelsea defeated Manchester City in the UCL finally. So sometimes it is not about the coach it is about the players mentality too.

Xabi Alonso set up the team just like he had been doing all season that made them go 52 games unbeaten, so he didn’t do much there, if he has set up the team differently it would have been a gamble. The thing that made Leverkusen to loose the match was that the players lost focus and felt that their were on top of the world. Atlanta were composed and benefited from their composure. If you ask me I will say they were better overall in the competition and deserved it more; Atlanta. They passed the more difficult route to the final

Xabi Alonso this Xabi Alonso that lol.... He wasn't even moved during that game against Atalanta to be honest,. Failing us not so bad, even the best coaches in the world fail and has lost a final one way or the other.
Pep Guardiola lost to Chelsea in the Champions League finals, Carlo Ancellotti has also lost, Jose Mourinho has lost and same goes for Sir Alex Ferguson and Jurgen Klopp.

But you're wrong, you saying he lacks experience is your own opinion and I don't agree with you not to even talk about seeing it that way. Xabi Alonso has experience, Atalanta's coach and and players had a good tactical approach to the game which worked out nicely for them.

Also shout-out to Ademola Lookman who had the game all in him palm and made sure that they won. The defense is something Xabi Alonso has got to improve. They've got to improve truly.