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Sevilla coach Lopetegui: They say he never gives up

2020-09-24T13:26:53.780Z


Coach Julen Lopetegui has been ridiculed as Spain's sucker. He still found happiness at Seville. He goes into the Supercup final against FC Bayern with a record series.


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Relief and cheers: Julen Lopetegui

Photo: 

Pool / Getty Images

"Complejo" - complex, multi-layered: Julen Lopetegui's favorite word.

Hardly a sentence goes without it when the coach of Sevilla FC talks about his team, the opponent and the football.

The Covid season, which ended with the sixth triumph in the Europa League for his club over a year after its start, was complex.

The challenge of surviving the European Supercup final against Bayern Munich this Thursday will be complex, for sure (9 p.m.; TV and stream: Sky and DAZN; live ticker SPIEGEL.de).

Above all, what is complex is his own career.

Even if he would rather not say the word in this context.

Because he, an excellent analyst of the game, has problems critically reflecting on himself.

And because he prefers not to talk about the past in the first place.

Lesson of humility with a sledgehammer

Do you want to blame him?

In 2018, the former goalkeeper from the Basque Country put down a double that Spanish football will probably never see again.

Within four and a half months he was fired as coach of the national team and Real Madrid.

Whereby he earned his expulsion from his first job by secretly negotiating the second job two days before the start of the World Cup.

Lopetegui never saw that that might not have been the best way - in a surreal inaugural gala at Real, he was rather stylized as a martyr.

And as if the football gods had to teach him the lesson of humility with a sledgehammer, they gave "Julen the Short" a negative record in terms of club history.

14 games, only six wins, 481 minutes in between without a goal.

His last assignment was a 1: 5 at FC Barcelona.

"Lopetegui, selección!"

sang the Camp Nou in light of his impending release.

"Lopetegui for Spain": In this mockery all of his injustices met.

Not only was he the unlucky one again, who was already an active (substitute) keeper in his only game for Real with the first goal conceded and years later in his debut for Barcelona five pieces and then a dismissal for time play .

In Porto he was ridiculed as "Lottopegui"

Not just the cabaret figure who fainted live at the tactics board as a television expert during the 2006 World Cup and was smiled at by Benfica rival Jorge Jesus as "Lottopegui" during his coaching job at FC Porto.

He also seemed to have ruined his reputation as a top coach, which he had earned in Spain through a European title with the U21s (2013) and two undefeated years with the senior national team.

You first have to find out from such valleys: When he was thrown into the air by his players last month after Seville's Europa League triumph over Inter and shed tears in the company of his coaching team, this salvation had to be granted him from the heart.

"They say he never gives up," explains the second stanza of the empathic club anthem about the Sevilla Fútbol Club.

Where could someone like Lopetegui have found happiness better, which headline could better fit his life?

But there had to be someone who would give him another chance, and only someone with the unassailable authority of "Monchi" Rodríguez could do that.

Seville's sports director, also a former goalkeeper, transformed Seville from a second division into a top club.

In his first important decision after returning from an interlude at AS Roma in 2019, he presented this personnel to a stunned board member.

He even gave Lopetegui - as the first coach in 20 years in office - a three-year contract.

Monchi likes to rely on people who have something to prove.

"It's a coach who has to triumph," he explained to the many doubters.

"Lopetegui, resignation," it said from the stands

And how Lopetegui triumphed.

In Spain's weakest Champions League season since 2007, only Sevilla represented the leading league in the UEFA five-year championship in the European Cup semi-finals.

Only Seville seemed physically on par with the competition.

Only Seville was at least competitive enough to compensate for the speed disadvantage that the stagnant Spanish teams have recently been confronted with. 

Lopetegui, 54, quickly built a functioning team from a completely renewed squad.

Work intensity, training method and individual coaching have always been among his strengths.

His Sevilla showed itself to be strong, compact and easy to combine.

But the audience lacked art and creativity.

And Lopetegui could not do much because his ex-club Real Madrid is less popular in a few stadiums in Spain.

When the results waned in the winter and the Romanian representative Cluj almost eliminated them in the first knockout round of the Europa League, the reservations exploded into massive demands for resignation from the stands: "Lopetegui, dimisión".

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Lopetegui: Booed by spectators, celebrated after the Europa League triumph

Photo: POOL / REUTERS

The boos were repeated at the following league game.

A decimated Osasuna allowed Sevilla to equalize a 2-0 lead.

The demons of the past, there they lurked again, and no one can say how things would have gone if Youssef En-Nesyri had not scored the winning goal in the 93rd minute.

But for this one time, Lopetegui had fortune on his side.

It was the last home game to date in front of an audience.

Many observers justify Seville's strong season final spurt with sovereign Champions League qualification and Europa League title also with the empty grandstands.

It played more freely without the grumbling of fans critical of the coach.

No match has been lost since the Covid break, after 21 competitive games without a defeat, Lopetegui has his first club record.

Against Bayern - "there hasn't been such a strong team for years," he says - the series is on trial.

In midfield, Ivan Rakitic, who has returned from FC Barcelona, ​​will replace director Éver Banega, who has emigrated to Saudi Arabia.

Otherwise, the coach is still worried about the whereabouts of his coveted central defenders Jules Koundé and Diego Carlos until the end of the transfer, just as he is hoping for one of Monchi's famous bargains.

Complejo, complejo.

But Julen Lopetegui has already dealt with completely different things.

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Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2020-09-24

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