Santiago Solari
Insider gets permanent Real Madrid job after Lopetegui’s sacking
As usual, it was Jorge Valdano who put it best. “Under Santi Solari’s impeccable suit,” he wrote, “there’s a ball that’s covered in mud.”
Solari reads Nietzsche but it is football he knows best. He has no experience some might say, but he has spent a lifetime in the game, inheriting ideas and learning from his family.
Solari’s father, Eduardo, was a player and so was his uncle Jorge. His brothers Esteban and David play, as does his nephew Augusto.
When Jorge and Eduardo retired in the mid-1970s they founded Renato Cesarini, a club and football school in Rosario that counts internationals Javier Mascherano and Martin Demichelis among its graduates. Between them, Jorge and Eduardo also coached teams in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, USA, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Spain.
And now Santiago is in charge of arguably the world’s biggest club.
It is Solari junior’s first senior job and it is the hardest of them all. But that doesn’t make him inexperienced – and still less, naive. “I know the world of coaching through my dad, who I accompanied all the way,” he says.
Solari has also demonstrated a rare understanding of how football works at every level – from pitch to dressing room to stands, from board room to press room – and at Real Madrid especially.
A former Madrid player, he found a way to survive a model that was designed to force players like him out. And that experience may even have been more useful than the five years he spent coaching in the club’s youth system.
From the inside, he observed and learnt. He knows the world he has just walked into and how unforgiving it can be. “We’re all just passing through in life,” he explains, “and even more so in this profession.”
For the previous two-and-a-half years, Solari had been in charge of Real Madrid Castilla, the club’s reserve side who play in Spain’s Segunda B, and he was given the opportunity to lead the first team after Julen Lopetegui was sacked in the wake of a 5-1 loss to Barcelona.
It was Madrid’s third loss in a row in La Liga and midfielder Casemiro called the team a “disaster”, describing the defeat as the “image of our season”.
The team had previously gone eight hours without scoring, which was just 12 minutes short of their worst-ever run, losing five and winning only one of their last seven matches under Lopetegui. Beaten in the UEFA Super Cup on his competitive debut, Lopetegui lost as many games as he has won in all competitions: six of 14. When he left, Madrid were not even occupying one of La Liga’s European places.
Lopetegui had been sentenced for some time; the doubt was when it would happen, not if. He stood accused of ceding to player power and the president, Florentino Perez, swiftly lost faith. Brazilian teenager Vinicius Junior became a symbol of the club’s doubts over their coach; signed for € 45million, Lopetegui left him in the Castilla side.
As results started to go against Madrid, it was only the same lack of time and alternatives that had seen Lopetegui given the job in the first place that kept him in the dugout. Eventually the 52year-old was sent packing – 14 games into the job that cost him the chance to lead Spain in Russia. Fired two days before the World Cup, in four months he had been sacked from the two biggest jobs in the world for a Spaniard.
At first it appeared that Lopetegui’s
“I know the world of coaching through my dad, who I accompanied all the way”
replacement would be the former Chelsea manager Antonio Conte. The night of that 5-1 defeat at Barcelona, before Lopetegui had been informed of his sacking, Perez told journalists that the Italian would be in place by the following afternoon. But as the minutes ticked by on the Monday it became increasingly clear that wasn’t going to happen.
At more or less the same time as Perez was filtering the news through the usual favoured outlets, captain Sergio Ramos spoke to the media in the mixed zone at Camp Nou. Asked about Conte, and managers that rule with an iron first, he replied: “Respect has to be earned, not imposed.” He also noted that Madrid’s success had come with coaches “who you all know” – men such as Vicente Del Bosque, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane, who all had a lighter touch.
To many it sounded like a veto, but how important it actually was is yet to be seen and there have been contradictory versions of events explaining why things changed so fast. They go from Conte’s demands to his ongoing situation with Chelsea to a suspicion that Madrid had not been as convinced as it appeared.
In the same statement in which they announced the sacking of Lopetegui, Madrid named Solari as interim boss.
While Lopetegui was gracious in his departure, Madrid were not as they pointed out the “huge disparity” between the quality of a squad with eight Ballon d’Or candidates and the results. He had not been given much time, but the club would later lament that they had not sacked him sooner.
“Julen The Brief”, as he was called, may only have taken charge of 14 games, but his rapid removal was not unusual for his employers. Rafa Benitez was Madrid manager for 25 games, while Manuel Pellegrini lasted 28. Lopez Caro had 24 games in charge, Garcia Remin made it to 12 and Jose Antonio Camacho lasted six – which was still better than the first time he was coach of the club and didn’t even make it to the first.
Solari might have expected to last even less time, having been promoted from his role at Castilla, as Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) rules only allow interim coaches to be in charge for two weeks. That meant he was due four games: Melilla, Valladolid, Viktoria Plzen and Celta Vigo.
Solari won all four, scoring 15 and conceding just two, to make the best start of any coach in the club’s history.
In the meantime, candidates to take the post permanently – insofar as any coach is ever permanent – were scarce and Madrid harboured hopes that by the summer the situation may have changed for some of their targets. Solari appeared more of a solution by the second.
After beating Celta 4-2, the club’s director of institutional relations, Emilio Butragueno, squirmed and didn’t confirm that Solari would continue, but he did say that the club was “very happy” with the Argentinian. Solari was also a little coy, saying “all that matters is helping Madrid, in any way and any place you can”.
The following day the RFEF confirmed they had received the paperwork containing Solari’s new, permanent contract, although it wasn’t until the day after that Madrid finally made the announcement official.
Discernible changes under Solari were not easy to identity after just four games, although the absence of Isco and, to a lesser extent, Marco Asensio was notable. So too was his decision to make Thibaut Courtois his first choice in both La Liga and the Champions League, ending the rotation policy Lopetegui had followed.
He also moved Gareth Bale to the left for the first time in the Welshman’s career in Spain.
Solari’s ease in front of the media was noted, as was his management of the dressing room and boardroom. And that may well be the key – along with his understanding of the club from the inside: an experience which may prove more valuable than many other coaches have on the outside, from Conte to Mauricio Pochettino. Solari understands the pressures from all sides at Madrid and how to manage them.
Valdano recalled how, when he was sporting director, he would meet Solari every three months or so and invite him to leave, for economic reasons. Every time, Solari said no. Amicably, but firmly. He knew that he didn’t always have security even at Castilla. Guti publicly pushed for his job, and some at board level didn’t rate Solari – but he accepted that and carried on, never seeking more problems than those he already had.
As a player he empathised better than anyone, always adjusting and understanding the mechanisms, the personalities, the pressures. One newspaper called him the trade unionist for the Bernabeu workforce. Eloquent and elegant, he spoke openly about the flaws in the galactico project but he lived with it, thrived even. He talked about the frustration, but also about finding a way to be useful to the team.
And so, he stayed. And played. And won. Just as he has again this time.
Solari’s coach back then was Del Bosque, a man he says he admired for his ease with the players and his management of people. Like Solari, Del Bosque had begun his coaching career at the Bernabeu as an interim.
By the time he left he had won two leagues and two European Cups.
“We’re all just passing through in life, even more so in this profession”