Liverpool fans still love Xabi Alonso for his part in the 2005 Champions League win, and many hoped he would manage them one day. In the end, the job went to another Basque, Andoni Iraola, and Alonso joined Chelsea.
As a manager, he has lost both of his Champions League visits to Anfield: 4-0 with Bayer Leverkusen in November 2024 and 1-0 with Real Madrid in November 2025. The third comes in the EFL Cup fourth round, at Anfield in Liverpool, on Wednesday 28 October at 8pm GMT.
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Meet Melanie Gervasoni
Melanie Gervasoni
I've been a copywriter for almost 10 years now. The job, broadly, is getting people to read things they were fully prepared to scroll past. At 7bet, what I write about is sports and casinos.
Areas of Expertise
English football
Major tournaments
Pre-match analysis
Betting markets
Tennis
Basketball
Writing Approach
The stuff I’m proudest of is the articles you finish reading and come away actually understanding the game a bit better. I try my hardest to keep my English as plain as possible so that even beginners can grasp the topic.
How Do You Stay Up to Date?
- Stats and analytics platforms for form, xG, and head-to-head numbers
- Official league and club sites for confirmed team news and lineups
- Football news outlets, both British and continental press
- Odds movement across the books
- Watching live sports, obviously
Featured Work & Quick Facts
Approximate published articles: I must have written more than 800 articles throughout my career – these are a few I particularly enjoyed writing for 7bet.
Education & Languages
- I have a degree in Marketing, Sales and Export Management, which sounds grander than my daily to-do list usually is, but it's how I ended up writing for a living.
- I work in two languages: Italian, my native language, and English, which I'm fluent enough in to argue about football.
