Spain in uproar as coach Lopetegui lands Madrid job
The shock appointment of Julen Lopetegui, the Spain coach, at Real Madrid three days before his side kick off their World Cup campaign was met with bewilderment and fury as the team’s preparations were thrown into chaos.
The announcement came as a huge slap in the face to Luis Rubiales, the Spanish Football Federation president, who hastily cancelled his appearance at today’s pivotal Fifa Congress and flew from Moscow to the team’s base in Krasnodar, where he will hold a press conference alongside Lopetegui to explain this most untimely turn of events. In the meantime, the federation imposed a blackout on players, forbidding them from speaking about the appointment.
Rubiales was voted in as president only last month and his first act was to hand Lopetegui a new contract until after Euro 2020, but the coach’s decision to walk away from the national team as soon as the World Cup ends is a huge blow to his authority. The new deal was signed on May 22, in the lead-up to the Champions League final and when no one suspected that Zinedine Zidane would walk out on the club just days after beating Liverpool in Kiev, winning a third successive European Cup.
The backlash against the announcement in Spain began with stinging editorials in two of the leading newspapers, which slammed the coach for causing a huge distraction for his squad and for negotiating the move when he should have been preparing for their opening game against Portugal in Sochi on Friday.
“Contracts in football may be made of plasticine but two days before a World Cup, you cannot risk being seen as a pyromaniac in your own home. Coaches need to be leaders and the worst example they can set is putting themselves ahead of the group like this,” said El Pais.
Fellow broadsheet El Mundo braced itself for the prospect of Lopetegui being asked if he wanted to sign Neymar or sell Gareth Bale on the eve of a vital World Cup match and also attacked Real Madrid for undermining the national team.
“This is a crime against the state, against public order, because one club can never torpedo the flagship of Spanish football, which has always been the Spain team,” it said.
It is believed Madrid were forced to make the surprise announcement yesterday after the six Real players in the Spain camp learned of the news and another player also found out about it, leading Lopetegui to fear it would leak out and create unrest.
It all points to terrible planning and organisation within the national team set-up when the only objective should be on having the best preparation possible for the tournament after their disastrous exit from the group stage as holders in 2014. A former journeyman goalkeeper, who played one game for Real and, like Zidane, also coached their reserve team, Lopetegui has had scant experience at club level,
Shock move: Spain head coach Julen Lopetegui will join Real Madrid after the World Cup with his only major job being an 18-month, trophy-less spell with Porto. Indeed, before he took the Spain job in July 2016, he was in negotiations to take over at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Lopetegui has made the significant leap from almost taking the dugout at Molineux to the top job at the Santiago Bernabeu thanks to his excellent record with the national team, having turned the burnt-out side he inherited from Vicente del Bosque into one of the top candidates for the World Cup, going unbeaten in 20 games and enhancing the thrilling style of play.
His careful management of the Spain dressing room and his close relationship with players such as Madrid’s Isco, Dani Carvajal, Marco Asensio and captain Sergio Ramos is also thought to have won him support at Real Madrid, who turned to him once their top target Mauricio Pochettino was ruled out for his high price after signing a new deal with Tottenham Hotspur.