What Real Madrid fans can take from Julen Lopetegui’s time at Porto
Julen Lopetegui has been appointed the new Real Madrid manager. Here is how his previous club job at Porto went and what Madrid fans can take away from it.
It has been a chaotic couple weeks in Spanish football. After Zinedine Zidane announced that he was leaving Real Madrid just little over a week after winning a third Champions League, the club has been constantly linked with a number of high profile managers such as Maurcio Pochettino, Masimilano Allegri and Antonio Conte. Up until Tuesday it seemed that Madrid had failed to capture their preferred choices and were going to promote youth coach and former midfielder, Guti Hernandez, to the top job. However, an announcement made on Tuesday at 5PM local time revealed that Spanish national team manager, Julen Lopetegui, would be taking the reigns at the Bernabeu after the World Cup.
Despite the bizarre timing of the decision, it had seemed that all had finally settled until the RFEF (the Spanish football association) called a press conference for 10:30 Wednesday morning. After an hour delay, the recently elected president, Luis Rubiales, shocked the country by sacking Lopetegui just two days before La Roja’s World Cup opener against Portugal, stating the 51 year old failure to inform the RFEF of his decision until a few minutes before it was announced.
As the fallout from that particular announcement continues, Julen Lopetegui is now officially Real Madrid manager. The 51 year old appointment is quite a shock as he had recently signed an extension with national team job till 2020 and hadn’t been amongst the top candidates to take over. Nonetheless, he is an exciting and intriguing appointment by the club.
Lopetegui started his playing career through the Real Madrid youth system. A goalkeeper, he played just a single game for them before he went onto Barcelona where he once again made only a handful of appearances. He finished his career at Rayo Vallencano. His first managerial role was with there, taking over shortly after he had retired as a player, but it only lasted 10 games. After spending some time as a TV pundit, he managed Real Madrid B side for a year before entering the Spanish youth setup, working his way from the Under-19s to the senior team in a span of six years.
Along the way he helped develop many of the member of the current Spain squad and even won the Under 19s and Under 20s European championships in 2012 and 2013 respectively. He took over from Vicente Del Bosque after Spain’s quarter final exit in the 2016 Euros and had yet to taste defeat as head coach, leading La Roja to Russia at a canter. His international management career gives Madrid fans plenty to be optimistic about, he had a leading role in developing Madrid regulars like Isco and Asensio and his World Cup squad contained six Madrid players, including club captain, Sergio Ramos.
Among the few concerns about Lopetegui’s is his poor record at club football,specifically is ill fated spell at Portuguese giants, Porto who managed for two between 2014 and 2016. With some help from regular watchers of Porto, I took a look at Lopetegui’s time at the club to see what it could tell Madridistas about their new manager.
On paper, Lopetegui’s Porto stint was a disaster. He was appointed in the summer of 2014 with the largest budget in the club’s history and failed to collect any silverware, the first time in 26 years that Porto had finished trophy less. Although Lopetegui did manage to lead his side to a shock 3-1 win against Bayern Munich, he followed it up with a 6-1 win loss away from home, Porto’s joint worst European defeat in their history.
His second season was even worst demonstrated in the fact that he became just the seventh Porto coach in 34 years to be sacked midway through the season. Among some of the chief struggles for Lopetegui was adapting to club football with his rotation policy and tactics more suited to cup competitions. It also took him a long time to figure out his preferred starting XI, with Porto fans nicknaming him Lottotegui. He struggled against the bigger teams in Portugal winning just two of his seven matches against Benfica and Sporting. His tactics in these games were also criticized for being too cautious.
However, it would be unfair to completely blame Lopetegui with his style of football not suiting the Portuguese league from the start. The Basque encouraged his players to play attractive, possession based football despite many of the lesser sides in Portugal infamous for parking the bus against the established top three. Not only will Lopetegui be armed with more gifted attacking players at Real Madrid, his playing style will also be better fit for the Spanish giants than it was for Porto
Despite finishing empty handed, Porto did play well under Lopetegui in his first season, they finished just two points off Benfica in Lopetegui’s first season and were unlucky not to win the league and despite the manner of their capitulation in Munich, few sides come away from the Allianz Arena with anything, but a defeat and their home victory was their first ever home win over the Bavarians. Lopetegui was also given a very harsh treatment by the Portuguese media, which might have had a role in why he was sacked so early.
Among the big postives from Lopetegui’s time at Porto was him demonstrating a great eye for young talent, notably giving a 17-year old Ruben Neves his debut. This will be encouraging news for Real Madrid who, despite of having a wealth of young talent, are still relying on an aging core.
There is no way you can look at Lopetegui’s tenure at Porto and claim he was successful. Although, he isn’t completely to blame for Dragoes struggles (they won their first title overall since 2013 this season), Lopetegui did play a role in Porto’s failings. There are some legitimate concerns about how poorly he adapted to club football and his record against title contenders, but one suspects that his time at in Portugal and his stint with the Spanish national team has thought Lopetegui plenty about managing a big side like Real Madrid.
There is also reasons to be excited, especially his record with young players meaning that at the very least, Lopetegui will leave Real Madrid’s next coach with a very promising group of young talent to work with. He is far from the ideal coach for Los Blancos, but in a tight market, he is their best option.