As former Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Julen Lopetegui today spoke at the Academia Aspire Global Summit in Rome, he recalled a specific episode from his time at Wolves.
Spanish outlet Marca features a story to recall that the manager took charge of the Molineux side in a complicated position, and needed to impose himself and his ideas in order to turn things around.
Lopetegui then revealed that he had his own plan to create a better environment, and it worked pretty well.
“Every context is different, there is no single strategy. When we arrived at Wolves in December last year, the team was at the bottom and I was not used to fighting for relegation, it was a challenge for me and my coaching staff. We started working on creating a special atmosphere as soon as possible,” said Julen Lopetegui, with the quotes relayed by Marca.
“We were conceding a lot of goals, so I decided to invite the players to lunch out of my own pocket after every game in which we kept a clean sheet. It started to work, we won and suddenly such a positive energy was generated that we decided to extend the invitation to the entire staff of the club. Everyone at Wolverhampton got involved. In the end we got eight clean sheets, although it was expensive…”
Lopetegui took charge of Wolves in November 2022 and commanded the team in 27 matches. He had 10 wins, five draws and 12 losses, and they managed to make a big recovery from their bad start, finishing the Premier League in 13th position.
The manager was supposed to stay at the club for another season, but due to disagreements with the board, he left before it began. It’d be quite interesting to see his own version of this story, but it seems the Spaniard didn’t mention that subject in his speech on Tuesday.
