“And then suddenly they sacked me.” Julen Lopetegui is running through the reasons to be cheerful – safety secure, 17 shots at the Etihad and the physical stats, an identity emerging, a winter window and a kinder calendar coming – when he uses one of only two English lines in as many hours, delivered as if the final page of a story.
Instead he headed to Mexico, where he is building a hotel with his brother Joxean, a former pelota player, and as he arrives at another hotel, this time in Madrid, it is clear getting away from it all was good for him.
“My father died and, although you can’t compare them, personal and professional mourning came together,” Lopetegui says.
Spaniard on the ‘pain and anger’ of his sacking at West Ham and rejecting an immediate return to management.
Five weeks from his sacking at West Ham, the anger and hurt has subsided, on the surface at least.
