Juanma
Lillo (Tolosa, 1965) is officially, since yesterday, a member of the coaching staff of the Manchester
City what commands Pep
Guardiola, who has the Gipuzkoan coach as his mentor. The former coach of Real will not only find himself at home in the English 'giant' because he will work under the command of a coach who speaks his exact language, but because in the 'Sky Blues' he will meet other well-known faces who , somehow, they will form a small txuri urdin lobby.
With Lillo there will be three professionals in the Manchester
City they have a past in Real. The most relevant, without a doubt, Aitor
Begiristain (Olaberria, 1964), maximum sports manager of the current champion of the Premier
League. The football director of the City He came to Zubieta at age 16 after playing for Segura and Olaberria, and is part of the golden age of the Txuri Urdin club. In the six years he played in Real, he played 248 games scoring 34 goals, and, although he did not participate in the two Leagues, he was part of the template that won the Super Cup at 82/83. Already consolidated as an indisputable pillar of the team, it was proclaimed champion of Cup in 1987, scoring a goal in the final, and in his last campaign as txuri urdin before signing for Barcelona, he achieved the double runner-up in the League and Cup in 1988. After being the sports director of the Catalan club, he arrived in England in 2012.
A year later than Begiristain, I arrive Xabi
Manzisidor (Pasai Donibane, 1970) to the English club as a goalkeeping coach, with the help of Manuel
Pellegrini, with whom he had already worked at Real Madrid and Malaga. The passenger technician, in fact, arrived at the Bernabéu in 2009 on the recommendation of Juanma
Lillo, under whose orders he worked at the Royal between 2008 and 2009. It was fourteen months that the coach from Toulouse led the team of his life, La Real. Something more than a year that was very hard, in the Second Division, at the darkest time in the history of the txuri urdin club, in the midst of bankruptcy. Lillo was hired by Iñaki Badiola, he was millimeters away from promoting to Primera on the terrible afternoon of Mendizorroza and, after the arrival of Aperribay to the presidency, his contract was not renewed. It was replaced by Martin
Lasarte.
Lillo and Manzisidor they will meet again more than ten years later under the supervision of Begiristain, contemporary of a Juanma
Lillo that she was going to watch him train when they had both just come of age. A txuri urdin lobby in one of the most powerful teams in Europe.