Lopetegui, in the uncertainty of a third year in Nervión

Julen Lopetegui looks to the 2021-2022 season with the hope of continuing his great work at the helm of Sevilla. After two successful campaigns in which he lifted a European title and managed to sign the best league score of the club in all its history, faces for the first time in his career a third year as owner of the same bench. Neither in Rayo, nor in Castilla, nor in Porto, nor in Real Madrid did he manage to last beyond his current background as Sevilla coach. And the goals reflect the ambition present in this Seville: he wants more in the league after 77 points last year and Monchi already manufactures together with him a team that can take one more qualitative leap to fight for everything in the coming season.

The 77 points of his second year improved the 70 of his debut in Nervión. There are almost no doubts about the work of the Basque coach, who left behind the ghosts born of his period at Real Madrid and confirmed that his alliance with the Sevilla squad and with the philosophy of the club is total. His previous longest experience was at Porto, when he was sacked during his second season at the helm of the Portuguese team after a bumpy run in which he failed to win a title. Confidence is now full in Sevilla about their ability to lead a new course of illusion in which the option of fighting with the greatest is on the table. Both José Castro, its president, and Monchi, its great supporter, insisted on the commitment to make Seville even more competitive with a view to the imminent future. Lopetegui picks up that witness and is a fundamental part of that planning together with the sports management.

Much uncertainty rests on the figure of Lopetegui at the gates of this third year, but above all it is based on the enormous expectation created after two campaigns with many more lights than shadows. Will your project be able to compete for something else in LaLiga and to attack the final rounds of the Champions League? Monchi tries to accompany the figure of his coach with pieces that can invite growth in that sense, without losing the philosophy of sale and purchase in the club with each transfer market. “The model works and we have to maintain it,” insists Monchi. Lopetegui hopes that there will not be too many exits with respect to his main figures on the squad, but he also trusts the great management of his sports director on the threshold of his third year at Nervión.