Lopetegui appointed Spain’s new manager

Julen Lopetegui

MADRID: Former Porto boss Julen Lopetegui was appointed manager of Spain on Thursday, replacing World Cup and European Championship-winning head coach Vicente del Bosque.
“The Royal Spanish Football Federation has named Julen Lopetegui as new national manager,” the national team announced in a brief statement on its official website.
The post became vacant after Del Bosque resigned following Spain’s defeat to Italy in the Euro 2016 last 16.
Former Real Madrid boss Del Bosque had led Spain to the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 titles, after taking over from Euro 2008-winning coach Luis Aragones.
But the second half of his stint was disappointing, with the 2-0 defeat to Italy following a shock group-stage exit from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil as defending champions.
Lopetegui, a former goalkeeper, has over his career achieved varying degrees of success on the pitch and as a coach.
The 49-year-old’s spells as a goalkeeper at Real Madrid and Barcelona saw him spend much of his time on the bench.
But he was highly successful at smaller club Logrones from 1991 to 1994 at a time when the team was in the country’s first division.
Retiring from professional football in 2002, he became coach of Rayo Vallecano — a team in Spain’s second tier — where he had last played before retiring.
He then moved on to Real Madrid where he coached the club’s Castilla reserve team, the same post that Zinedine Zidane held before moving on to managing the first team.
Lopetegui, who hails from the northern Basque country, subsequently coached the national team’s under-19s, under-20s and under-21s.
He led his teams to victory in the 2012 European Under-19 Championship and a year later in the Under-21 European Championship, which featured David de Gea, Thiago Alcantara and Alvaro Morata, all of whom were at Euro 2016.
In 2014, he took over Porto and led them to the quarterfinals of the 2014-15 Champions League before being eliminated by Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich.
He signed Iker Casillas from Real Madrid in July 2015, but was sacked by Porto in January without winning a trophy.
Influential sports daily Marca said Lopetegui’s intimate knowledge of the workings of the national team was “ideal” as Spain seeks to re-emerge from a dark patch after failures in Brazil and France.
“Lopetegui has a nice challenge ahead,” it wrote.
“His adventure starts in September with the friendly between La Roja and Belgium.”