Xabi Alonso once suggested Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool did something better than Spain’s World Cup winning team

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The Liverpool sides of the past 10 years or so are some of the greatest to have been assembled at Anfield.

With the Reds having won just about everything they could under Jurgen Klopp, those to have worn the shirt will be remembered long into the future.

And with Liverpool looking set to win the Premier League and perhaps even more trophies besides under Arne Slot, they are far from finished yet.

Nevertheless, as good as these teams are and have been, Liverpool’s history is filled with XI’s who could give them a game.

One which perhaps did not quite win the trophies it deserved was Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool of the mid-to-late 2000’s.

Xabi Alonso was a key cog in that side, and despite being similarly important to Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and even the all-conquering Spanish national team, Alonso once said Benitez’s Liverpool did something better than all of them.

Xabi Alonso hails Liverpool’s spine of 2009

Alonso did win the Champions League with Liverpool during his – and Benitez’s – first season in 2005. The pair followed it up with an FA Cup a year later.

However, that should really have been the start of a period of silverware for Liverpool. Instead, they fell short in the Champions League final in 2007 and lost the Premier League by four points in 2009.

Alonso knew they should have had much more. And while speaking to The Guardian‘s Simon Hughes for a book in 2016, he claimed that the spine of the 2009 Liverpool team was the best he’d ever played in.

“To win the league you need to have everything,” said Alonso. “These were my happiest times at Liverpool: Pepe [Reina] to [Daniel] Agger, Agger to me, me to Stevie [Gerrard] and Stevie to [Fernando] Torres.

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“Sometimes it would take less than 10 seconds. The spine in that team was the best I’ve played in.

“You also have Carra [Jamie Carragher] and [Javier] Mascherano in the side – top-class players. There was skill, steel and speed; it was very competitive, very intense. Very, very determined and committed.”

Liverpool frustration lingers for Alonso

It is a real compliment to those players and the Liverpool team of the time that seven years on from playing in it, Alonso still regarded them so highly.

At the time the Spaniard was a year or so away from his retirement and as a result had pretty much his whole career to look back on. To pick out an ultimately unsuccessful Reds team from the likes of World Cup and Champions League-winning sides is really something.

“This side did not win anything together but we felt we could win everything,” Alonso continued. “We had a few stupid draws at home and in the end that’s why we did not win the league.

“We always had that feeling, that belief and confidence. Nobody scared us. We went to the Bernabeu and won. We went to Old Trafford and won. We went to Stamford Bridge and won: big games, big occasions that define seasons. It frustrates me so, so much.

“In 2005, we won the Champions League with a not-so-good team,” he admitted. “In 2007, we lost the Champions League final with a better team and a more convincing performance. In 2009, we played the best football and lost the least amount of games but still did not win the league. That is the beauty of football, I guess. It is not a straight line.”

Beauty, perhaps. But that a Liverpool team containing Reina, Carragher, Agger, Alonso, Mascherano, Gerrard and Torres never won anything will forever remain a mystery.