"Yesterday was the saddest day of my life after my mother died. Today - the happiest," 51-year-old Julen Lopetegui introduced himself to Madrid's Real team with tears in his eyes. In the football specialist's life in the last 48 hours, some difficult things happened - just before the 2018 World Cup, he reached an agreement with Madrid's Real, but at the same time was fired from the Spanish national team, which was considered one of the favorites to win the World Championships. This story caused a huge uproar - after Real announced that they had reached an agreement with J. Lopetegui, the Spanish Football Federation decided not to wait for the end of the championship, as agreed between the two countries, and immediately dismissed him from his coaching duties. The president of the Spanish Football Federation stated at a press conference yesterday that he found out about the negotiations between J. Lopetegui and Real just five minutes before the official announcement, but both the coach and Florentino Perez told a completely different story. "The first person who found out about my agreement with Real was him (Luis Rubiales). For two years we had to work with four different presidents in the federation - during that whole period we only survived thanks to a strong team collective. "In this whole situation, we only sought one thing - fairness and transparency. Delaying the announcement of the agreement with Real would only have worsened the situation, and I certainly didn't want to do that. Initially, Rubiales was sincere and congratulated me on this step, but later something happened that I don't know. On the same day, I wanted to hold a press conference, but was told to wait for the president's word. We wanted to be open and tell everything to the public. I couldn't do it - soon I found out that I was fired," J. Lopetegui shared his thoughts. Before J. Loptegui began to speak, the president of Real Madrid also explained his position: "We reached an agreement that was supposed to take effect after the World Cup. We didn't want to wait, as announcing the information during the tournament would have caused much more damage. We have never seen such a scenario in any football federation where reaching an agreement with a coach would lead to his immediate dismissal before the start of such a tournament. Rubiales' reaction to this was simply absurd. It was just a simple desire to damage the image of the Real club, which is experiencing its golden age having won the Champions League three times in a row. The agreement with Lopetegui was reached within a few hours - our position was to announce everything as soon as possible to avoid any speculation. The federation's reaction was unfair, unprecedented, and driven by one person's ego." J. Lopetegui signed a three-year contract with the club. As the strategist himself stated, he will start working with the team from tomorrow.
@julenlopetegui #WelcomeLopetegui #HalaMadrid
@julenlopetegui, new Head Coach of #RealMadrid. #WelcomeLopetegui | #HalaMadrid
