Julen Lopetegui, it appears, is not a signatory to the quaint football convention that you do not discuss taking a job while another manager is in that job. He is not the first to trample over that behavioural nicety. And he won’t be the last.
Lopetegui, though, has managed to take things a step further: his friends in the media reported he had agreed to become West Ham’s new manager on Monday morning long before the club made a hasty announcement in the evening that David Moyes, the club’s most successful manager for decades, would leave at the end of the season.
‘The recruitment process for David’s successor has begun,’ the official West Ham statement said. What it could have said was: ‘The recruitment process for David’s successor has ended.’ But that might have been a bit too close to the truth.
The club’s board is fortunate indeed that Moyes chose to depart with only generous words of farewell. It was a lot more than they deserved. It feels very much as if Lopetegui’s tenure is being born under a bad sign. That is hardly unusual for the way West Ham conduct their business. Some might say that Lopetegui and the West Ham owner David Sullivan deserve each other.
‘Show some class, West Ham,’ the former England defender Stephen Warnock had said yesterday morning as more of the unpalatable details of Moyes’ treatment began to emerge. There was never much chance of that, I’m afraid.
Julen Lopetegui’s West Ham reign is being born under a bad sign after agreeing to take the job while David Moyes is still in charge
Moyes is the best thing that has happened to West Ham and he deserves better treatment after winning the club’s first trophy in 43 years
Class is not the first word that springs to mind with either Sullivan or Lopetegui, sadly, but maybe the former porn baron has found the boss he has always yearned for. Perhaps this will be a beautiful union of kindred spirits.
Mail Sport’s Oliver Holt writes that perhaps Lopetegui and West Ham owner David Sullivan deserve each other after a lack of class during the appointment process
Eighteen months later, in December 2019, West Ham had to go back to Moyes to ask him to clean up the mess that Pellegrini had made. Moyes did that and much more. It was only 11 months ago that West Ham won their first European trophy for 58 years when they lifted the Europa Conference League final in Prague.
That victory made Moyes the only British…