Steak-lover Julen eyeing menu after starter well done
IN his inaugural season as Wolves manager Julen Lopetegui served up Premier League survival.
Now the coach, and restaurant owner, wants to know what ingredients he’ll have to work with next term, as he looks to put more ambitious dishes on the Molineux menu.
After arriving in November when Wolves fans were on very thin rations at the foot of the Premier League, a 13th-place finish is a tasty result.
Over a glass of smooth red wine at Wolves’ training ground, the Spaniard revealed how he is hungry to compete higher up the table, as he opened up on his passion for football and food.
The game wasn’t in his blood, but food and sport were after growing up in his family restaurant in Spain where he often had to work the grill as a teenager. It was demanding, hot graft in his hometown of Asteasu in the Basque country up north.
Now the former goalkeeper, 56, has a restaurant of his own in Madrid. He smiled: “I was the black sheep of the family, it is true. I always dreamed I can become a player.
“My family owned a restaurant and me, my father, my mother, all my brothers, my aunty, all of us worked at different times.
“If you wanted to play football, first you had to finish your homework – not school work
– in the restaurant.
“My favourite memory was managing the grill. I love to grill, believe me I am a master. But I remember one day the restaurant was full of people so we had maybe 25 steaks grilling over the flames.
“A friend of mine came with a ball. My job was to attend the flames on the grill.
“I’m thinking, ‘It will be OK, for a few seconds, I’ll play football...’ But it was more like 10 minutes and the steaks all went on fire! The equivalent of one week’s wages gone. It was my fault, can you imagine?”
The incident did not put him off his food. “I prefer to spend money on good meat rather than good clothes or a good car,” he said.
There is a redblooded quality to Lopetegui too – just ask Nottingham Forest after stormy clashes with Wolves that saw both clubs fined.
Lopetegui said: “Sometimes when I see myself I don’t like me. I think, ‘He is crazy, mad’. But the next match I am the same – sorry, it is me.”
He has “forbidden” his son from following him into the maelstrom of management – Daniel, who is studying in London, is instead an analyst assisting Wolves’ sporting director Matt Hobbs.
If Lopetegui needs respite from the front line himself he turns to music. “When I want to be alone I like to play piano,” he added. Despite concerns over Ruben Neves’ likely sale, and the club’s spending power amid Financial Fair Play issues,Wolves fans will be hoping for more of right notes next
season.