Real Madrid manager Xabi Alonso speaking to media on the eve of his side’s Champions League meeting with Liverpool at Anfield:<\/b> “It’s a Clasico of European football, Real Madrid and Liverpool because of their history in the Champions League, and it’s one of those games the fans really look forward to seeing. Trent and I have history here at Liverpool, and it’s always great to come back to a place where they have loved you so much. We are coming to do our thing tomorrow, which is to play well and come away with a good result.”<\/b><\/p>\n
On his time at Liverpool and Benitez and how it has influenced his career:<\/b> “A lot because it wasn’t a simple step. I had long periods as a player and I learnt a lot from Rafa about elite football, to analyse details, prepare for games, and I also had the curiosity and which helped me to be in the position I am right now. And if you like football, you want to be in one of Europe’s big teams, like Liverpool, and they helped me a lot as a player and as a manager, too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real Madrid manager Xabi Alonso speaking to media on the eve of his side’s Champions League meeting with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-546870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115487476600581844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}