The Bundesliga champions were beaten 3-0 by domestic rivals Bayern Munich in the first leg of their last 16 clash on Wednesday (05.03.25) and the coach knows that his team will have to do something special to keep their European hopes alive.

Alonso said: "After this game we'll need a bit more time and after we recover - in football we've seen big miracles quite often and we almost need one.

"It's football, it's not my first time, and there's another game at home."

The Spanish coach played in the Liverpool team who famously recovered from 3-0 down to win the final against AC Milan in the 'Miracle of Istanbul' in 2005 and hopes that Leverkusen can use history as inspiration to launch a fightback in next week's return leg.

Alonso said: "It is not over until it is over and, as you said, anything can happen. The mindset has to be that and if there is a chance, we will fight for it.

"We have to fight back. We will learn from this and believe in our return leg. We don't give up so easily.

"Three goals? You never know. One goal can change anything."

The manager was left to rue Leverkusen's error-strewn display as suffered his first defeat to Bayern since taking charge of the club in 2022.

Asked for the reasons behind his team's poor performance, Alonso told DAZN: "Why? It was clear. I think we did it to ourselves. We know the details are important in the Champions League and the second goal, the red card and the penalty, we gave everything Bayern needed to win.

"We need to play maturely to control the game better and today we gave all the chances to Bayern to win 3-0.

"The mistakes, the details are important. It's a bitter evening, of course."