The footballer is still very much alive in the body of coach Xabi Alonso, which was obvious during the Spaniard's first Champions League game in the managerial role.

Just like last weekend when he made his Bundesliga debut for Bayer Leverkusen, Alonso seemed keen to play;

the former soccer star jumped through his coaching zone waving his arms, passionately pushed his Werkself, ran up and down.

Without a doubt, it would have been good for the Rhinelanders if Alonso, the midfield strategist, had been there on the pitch.

Maybe he could have done more there.

On the sidelines, he was helplessly at the mercy of the failure dynamic that his predecessor Gerardo Seoane, who had been sacked last week, had already suffered from.

Leverkusen clearly lost 3-0 to FC Porto.

And then Alonso said a sentence that would have fit many Seoane games in the first third of the season: "I don't think we deserve that."

Without the hoped-for immediate effect

It is therefore clear that the change of coach does not have the hoped-for immediate effect that those responsible had hoped for with their measure.

Alonso is not a liberator whose mere presence turns the losing team back into a functioning winning ensemble.

The problems are deeper.

"It was okay in terms of the basic playing system," said head of sport Simon Rolfes, and Jonathan Tah explained: "I think we've taken a lot with us in a short time.

Small tactical changes, but also the intensity that we had.

We definitely tried to play more compactly."

However, the most agonizing symptoms of the Leverkusen crisis also showed themselves in all their glory that evening: On the one hand, good offensive actions regularly end with inaccurate, unfortunate and sometimes pathetic conclusions.

Like Patrik Schick in the first leg, Kerem Demirbay failed with a terribly bad penalty shot by the once again outstanding Portuguese goalkeeper Diogo Costa.

This time in the 16th minute with the score at 0:1.

"Today was a crucial moment for us and in Porto too," said Alonso.

The second feature of the Leverkusen distress are the creepy mistakes when defending, nothing has improved here either.

This time Odilon Kossounou caught a particularly dark day.

After the nice 4-0 win against Schalke on Saturday, Alonso saw for the first time how unstable his new team reacts as soon as a slightly stronger opponent resists.

"That's my job, that's what we can and want to do better," he said of the many mistakes in front and behind.

Now he feels a "pain", which is not pleasant, but which can help a lot on the way to better times: "We have to use this pain to have good energy on Saturday."

Leverkusen are going to a difficult away game in Frankfurt, and not only former Eintracht goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky knows that the next defeat can easily be there.

"At the moment we just have to bite through a lot of shit to get the successes," he said.

"It goes on with hard work, football is sometimes thankless and merciless."

That also applies to the starting position in the Champions League.

Astonishingly, FC Brugge, who actually started the competition as a big outsider, is certain as a participant in the round of 16.

Porto, Atletico Madrid and Leverkusen can still hope for second place, with the factory club having the worst starting position and fearing that they will not even finish third in order to at least be able to continue playing in the Europa League.

But Alonso had a meager income from this evening: "Today was a good lesson for us," he said.