When the dream job became a nightmare for Zizou's successor: FFT's Chris Flanagan was at Camp Nou to see Los Blancos hammered by Barcelona
"Julen, please stay!" came the chant from Barcelona fans – and really that was the most damning thing of all. When the only people who wanted Julen Lopetegui to stay were the supporters of their fiercest rivals, Real Madrid could be pretty sure they had a problem.
By the time the score got to 5-1, Lopetegui had no more despair left to emote. He'd thrown his arms in the air in frustration as the third and fourth went in. When Arturo Vidal scored the fifth, there was just a hand to the face, and a realisation that the writing was on the wall.
Madrid may have been thrashed in El Clasico and sit ninth in La Liga, but Lopetegui vowed to fight on at the post-match press conference. His body language said something different; his face was ashen. He looked a broken man.
The wrong man from the start
Maybe none of this should have come as a surprise - the real surprise was that Lopetegui ever became Real Madrid manager in the first place.
This was a team that had become one of the most successful in history, winning three consecutive Champions Leagues before Zinedine Zidane's exit. But when Real Madrid looked for Zizou's successor, they turned to the Spanish version of David Moyes - and the Scottish version of David Moyes didn't do too well in La Liga, either.
Just like Manchester United after Sir Alex Ferguson, Real Madrid replaced a manager who'd won everything at club level with a manager who'd won precisely nothing. In Lopetegui's first club job, he'd been sacked after just 10 league matches at Rayo Vallecano - El Clasico, you might be interested to note, was his 10th league match in charge of Real Madrid.
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He got the Porto job on the back of success with Spain's U19s and U21s - and promptly presided over the club's first trophyless campaign since 1982/83. He was sacked midway through his second season, not long after their Champions League exit had been confirmed with defeat at Chelsea.
Very few people had heard of Julen Lopetegui back then, and his ascent was almost as rapid as his fall. Just as he was about to become manager of a Wolves side that had just finished in the bottom half of the Championship, he was surprisingly appointed as the new coach of Spain, guiding them to 20 matches unbeaten.
But none of those matches had come at a major tournament. Real Madrid didn't wait to see how he'd do at the World Cup. With hindsight, maybe they should have done.
Mr Nice Guy
"Don’t expect any reproaches from me for the players," Lopetegui said after defeat in the Clasico - and maybe that was the problem.
Reports in Spain have suggested that Lopetegui indulged his stars too much, when really what was needed a shake-up. Yes, Real Madrid won the Champions League again last season, but they finished 17 points behind Barcelona in La Liga. Something wasn't right. Zidane knew it, but his style was not one of confrontation - not unless you're Marco Materazzi in a World Cup final, anyway.
Perhaps things had been allowed to drift for too long and an ageing squad had found a comfort zone, amid suggestions that fitness levels had dropped. Promising young players like Vinicius Junior and Alvaro Odriozola were rarely used, and Lopetegui's line-up for the Clasico relied largely on the same old faces.
Those same old faces didn't deliver, but Lopetegui never got irate with his players on the touchline. There was a clap of encouragement when Thibaut Courtois gave the ball away cheaply early on, as if to say, 'Don't worry, keep doing what you're doing'. Real Madrid did keep doing what they were doing, and they kept losing possession, time and again.
Ernesto Valverde, a man with the look of a vampire Tony Mowbray, was no more animated - but his team were playing rather better. When the goals started to come, Lopetegui's claps of encouragement subsided and he stood motionless, the hope almost visibly draining from his body as he realised it just wasn't going to happen for him.
"Lopetegui looks like a guy waiting for an Uber that's never going to come," one person tweeted. That, despite repeated calls of taxi for Lopetegui.
No Ronaldo, no goals
Things got so bad for Lopetegui that he was even being trolled by a Barcelona-supporting nun. His side recently went 481 minutes without a goal, having previously scored in 73 consecutive matches during Zidane's reign. "I activated phone notifications for Madrid goals, but got nothing?" a nun remarked on Twitter, sparking headlines.
The summer departure of Cristiano Ronaldo left a huge hole in Real Madrid's armoury, and Lopetegui was unable to fill it. President Florentino Perez didn't do enough to sign a replacement - bringing Mariano Diaz back from Lyon was never going to be sufficient.
Lopetegui wasn't able to get enough from the players he already had, either. Barcelona didn't have Lionel Messi available for the Clasico, but found goals from elsewhere. Real Madrid haven't been able to do the same.
Vinicius was expected to be the bright new hope but can't score if he's not on the field, while Marco Asensio hasn't progressed this season when the stage could now justifiably be his. Even Gareth Bale struggled to influence the game enough against Barça.
Conte's tactics didn't work
All out of ideas, Lopetegui did have one last roll of the dice left at 2-0 down in the Clasico: what about trying Antonio Conte's tactics?
Many of the pre-match reports had suggested that Conte had been lined up to replace Lopetegui, so perhaps it was fitting that the incumbent boss unusually went to a three-man backline at half-time - the first principle of the Conte coaching manual. Raphael Varane came off with Nacho moving to centre-back, Casemiro dropping into defence and Lucas Vazquez coming on at right-wing-back.
Briefly, it worked - Vazquez provided the supply line for Marcelo, now playing at left-wing-back, to make it 2-1. Real Madrid even came close to an equaliser. But soon they were overrun in midfield and torn apart on the counter-attack; 2-1 turned to 3-1, then 4-1, then 5-1.
Not only were they struggling for goals, now they were awful in defence too. Sergio Ramos, one of the most successful centre-backs of the modern era, was reduced to hopelessly scrabbling about on the ground as his terrible first touch allowed Luis Suarez to run clear and complete his hat-trick. Around the Real Madrid team, heads dropped.
Lopetegui, it turns out, is not very good at being Antonio Conte. Florentino Perez may know a man who is, but whoever Lopetegui's replacement, the time for change had come.
Chris joined FourFourTwo in 2015 and has reported from more than 20 countries, in places as varied as Ivory Coast and the Arctic Circle. He's interviewed Pele, Zlatan and Santa Claus (it's a long story), as well as covering the World Cup, AFCON and the Clasico. He previously spent 10 years as a newspaper journalist, and completed the 92 in 2017.
