Five months ago Julen Lopetegui was one of the happiest men on the football planet. He was preparing to live his first World Cup off the bench with concrete chances to win it, after having dominated a qualifying round on paper not even so trivial and 20 games from the coach without the shadow of a defeat, traveling on average of more than 3 goals every 90 minutes.
Today Julen Lopetegui is an unemployed coach, infamously fired by a club that didn't even bother not to find a real replacement before putting him on the door, even forced to humiliate himself by directing one last training session against what remained of a team already no longer his, before emptying his locker in Valdebebas and returning home to the Basque Country, to update his curriculum thus: June 2018 to October 2018: Real Madrid head coach, exonerated after a 5-1 loss of Clásico and with the worst starting record in the Liga in the last 17 years.
"Who made me do it", poor Julen may be wondering, thinking about that slap in the face of the Federation by signing a contract with Real on the threshold of the World Cup. An unacceptable slap paid with the first exemption in 5 horrible months. That time at least he had the consolation of being able to lead the European champion club 3 times in a row, the most titled of Spain and the world, this time in his hand there is nothing left except a camiseta Blanca with his name on it, which is already much more than most coaches around the world can hope to achieve. related article having a bad day
ADVERTISING - READ ON BELOW"Who made me do it", will repeat again. Leaving a national team that he himself had brought back to excellent levels after the complicated end of the Del Bosque cycle to sit on the hottest bench in Europe, made red hot by the famous backside that had warmed up before him, that of Zinedine Zidane who, as if a name far more glamorous than that of Lopetegui was not enough, he had also put up three Champions League games won in a row. Losing a World Championship that maybe he would have won to try to drive a very complicated restart of a car that had removed several horses from its engine seeing its best bomber ever, Cristiano Ronaldo.
Julen accepted the most complicated job in the world, enticed by an opportunity that a couple of years ago she would never have dreamed of having. Because a brilliant career with the Spanish youth national teams (an Under-19 European in 2012, the Under-21 one the following year) had never managed to work alongside one that lived up to the clubs. A waiver at Rayo Vallecano in Segunda, a so-so season with the Real Madrid reserve team in Segunda B, then a year and a half by zeru tituli and another waiver at Porto. Imagine being able to train Real.
Lopetegui did it, even if only for 5 months, and for a very short period of time he had also convinced us that he could be the right man. The team played well, a collective football made of possession as it likes in Spain, Benzema had returned to scoring, Bale seemed to be able to take a central role at last and Cristiano Ronaldo's farewell had come to pass almost for a positive thing. Too bad it did not last long, too little, the time of a month and everything had vanished under the blows of 5 defeats in 7 games.
More than enough to pulverize his career and put an end to a rapid fall like the one taken in the standings by a team that fell to tenth place, as had his ascent. “If there will be life for me after Clásico? - he said at the press conference on the eve of 5-1 against Barcelona - I think I will breathe anyway ”. The air, at least that, nobody took it away from him, even if it will no longer be that of Valdebebas.
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