I mean, I’m not going to argue that his style is the most exciting. I’m of the opinion that results speak for themselves, however. A major European trophy last season, nearly QFs of Champions league this year, within striking distance of La Liga until 2-3 match days left this season. The results are the results.
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Apart from the subject at hand I want to say a few words about the season.
It was a wonderful season despite the covid backdrop and empty stadiums. The time has really flown and Sevilla have put on a good show and enhanced their reputation just by their general standard of conduct and play without actually winning a title.
So I can’t really criticize anyone or anything apart from la liga, the referees and VAR all of which are totally out of our control.
But it’s been a pleasure to share it with you guys, you have all made a difference with great comments and banter, and of course the podcasts. 
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Thanks Tim, love the community here as well! I also agree with you the reputation boost, I feel like more people see Sevilla as a larger threat now especially due to the great work of Lope and Monchi. Like I’ve said before, if we can keep our key players and build a squad around them we can actually start to make a better charge for the title
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You would have to think top 4 is a minimum. Try close down the points difference down to the leaders ect. Be more competitive against the said bigger sides.
Ideally get further in Europe and be competitive in the cup.
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I want to resurrect this topic section due to the excellent debate in the La Real discussion
For the people wanting Lope out, who would you like to replace him?
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I sense a growing frustration here with Lopetegui’s system/style of play plus his starting 11 and substitutions, so the raincloud is entirely above Lope’s head.
Too much personal responsibility on the players and that limits their creativity. You’ll see for every corner and free-kick YEN is defending the near post, then he has to gallop up field and chase the ball back to the goalkeeper. We don’t play for him, he plays for us, that’s pure Lope.
Lamela exploded into la liga, playing all over the pitch and every blade of grass, scoring through the centre, but I guarantee he’ll be on a leash by midseason.
But we haven’t lost, yet, and we’ve played 3 away games, new players are going to integrate, all is even-steven in the Champions group. Not a good time to even think about changing the trainer.
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I was writing about 15 pages of what I think is wrong with Lope’s tactics, but I figured noone is going to read that so this is the summary:
- Sevilla defense is sound besides Diego Carlos when he manages to concede a penalty almost every game…
- Offensively Sevilla is plain, uncreative and way too riskless. We have this season only made 1 goal from field-play that didn’t take advantage of an opponent’s mistake, and that was against an all-out-on-attack Getafe who where playing with only 10 men…
- No offensive ‘plays’ or ‘strategies’ are noticable, so no ‘repeatable’ chances.
- Irregular - maybe even irrational - starting line-ups.
Who I would like to see Lope replaced with:
Erik ter Hag. I don’t watch anything besides Sevilla usually so I don’t know many managers, but I happen to be invited to watch by some friends to watch Ajax a few times this season and damn they are playing well. Besides a really good mix of young talented players with some veterans - which I am really jealous of - , Ajax strategically plays very well too especially in the area’s I just mentioned. So despite being way better than their opponents in the Dutch league talent wise, I think they’re strategically very sound because of Ter Hag and their Champions League performances over the last 3 years do show.
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Lope’s decision making hasn’t inspired a lot of confidence lately, but RmanNERD asks a very important question. Who would we replace him with?
At this point, I don’t think firing Lope is worth the the headache that comes along with replacing a manager mid-season. Jesus mentioned ter Hag, and he might be a good fit, but do we have any reason to believe that he’d leave Ajax mid-season? In the grand scheme of things, Ajax to Sevilla isn’t really a vertical move.
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I agree with everything you just said. As long as Lope isn’t losing everything, we should just be looking for replacements that take over when the season is over.
And Ter Hag to Sevilla wouldn’t make much sense from Ter Hag’s careers perspective, but I can dream, haha. Sevilla is just stuck in a situation where everyone knows we are good, but we aren’t great and that shows thoughout the different aspect of the club. Not being a top-tier transfers destination, not able to sign top-tier managers, forever forth in the league, usually too good for Europa League, not good enough to really compete for Champions league. Not really an ideal situation.
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I see a lot of similarities between the Lope-Sevilla and the danish national team actually.
After many years of being downright mediocre at best, we hired Åge Hareide. Hareide’s first priority was getting points, no matter how. And he did - he created a solid base, made us unbeaten for I-don’t-know-how-many games, integrated the new generation of players and created a new interest for the team which gathered the fans and nation, although his style of play was very conservative and in a lot of eyes boring.
At some point the fans started to want more. We were getting the points, but now we wanted to win them in style. Enter Hjulmand who is taking the team to places we could only dream of a few years ago - playing with style, scoring goals, performing at championships. The whole football-part of the nation is buzzing with anticipation and excitement.
Imo Lopetegui seems to be our Åge Hareide. Massive respect for his results, but at the end of the day I think Hjulmand will be the one who is remembered even though Hareide laid the very foundation for his succes so far.
I just don’t know who our Hjulmand could be. Maybe Lopetegui himself, but he will have to re-invent himself.
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I agree with Ten Hag from a footballing perspective is a superb coach. Maybe it’s not realistic because of the things you mentioned but from a cultural perspective he doesn’t match either, he’s not a great spokesman so he will need a ton of help of the staff to communicate and transmit those ideas to an almost fully Spanish speaking team. I doubt this indirect way isn’t as effective as it could be. General football language is easy but intricate details aren’t.
Also Holland has accepted all the awkwardness and stiffness because when he speaks Dutch his technical football knowledge (which is insane) he can verbalise quite well. But changing this to broken English, might still work for the internationals in Ajax. But in Spain, not having that smoothness towards the press and towards players can become a big mess quickly. Not a risk I want to find out.
Same as Louis v. Gaal, telling Wayne Rooney how to shoot a ball, literally a piece out of a comedy.
“You have to shoot there, not here, when you come from here” that stuff’s good for a laugh but not for actual development.
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I love the analogy. It wouldn’t be natural for Lope to become Hjulmand in that sense, so it will be a tough task, but not an impossible one to find our own - and I completely trust Monchi on that.
Now of course NT football differs from club football, and maybe Hjulmand tactics and style of play wouldn’t be viable in long seasons competing in 3 fronts, but I’d be satisfied with Lope trying to become a better version of himself in overall, inspired by the likes of Simeone, Zidane or some sort. We can’t expect him to be the next Guardiola, but what really bothers me is his stubborn character, which leaves very little room for improvement or positive evolving.
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Guardiola is overrated. Yeah of course you look good spending billions of cash every year and always having the best squads. Yet despite that he’s failed to win the champions league with Bayern and Man City on multiple attempts. He tries to play the same way and the City fans are fed up with his predictability in the champions league.
You give lopetegui all that money and he’d do just as well as guardiola if not better.
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You got to remember guys lopetegui isn’t giving anywhere near the same money to spend like these other managers at big clubs get. We don’t have a stand out star player like other big clubs do too. We have a solid and strong squad but I think we need to realise our limitations and been grateful for how far we come from berrizo/montella days. On what he’s been given to work with overall he’s did a great job and even exceeded my expectations.
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Honestly, I see no need to replace Lopetgui. Sure, his football is hard to watch, but you can’t deny that it gets results. Last season, Lopetgui brought us to our highest point total - and this year we are still undefeated. We may not agree with all his decisions, but I don’t feel there’s any manager we could realistically sign that would do much better. We aren’t in a dire state. Last season, near the beginning, we were even worse. Losses to Eibar, Granada and Bilbao, all right after each other. A draw against Sociedad is fine compared to that.
I trust Lopetgui, at least for now. His football may be boring, and unnecessarily conservative, but unless our results remain poor, and we’re not top four by say, November, then I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
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There’s a nice counter for this ironically - Lope was the coach of RM and failed. RM had the money and stars, they sucked under Lope and they sacked him, rightfully so. Now of course clubs like RM are short-tempered and demand a lot from coaches, but just wanted to take an example. He was doing well with Spain NT though until he left them unexpectedly to join RM. Could be a sign that his style and tactics are more suitable for NT’s rather than clubs in long seasons?
Honestly, I really doubt that Lope would have a high success even with billions of budget and star players around him. Let’s say he would have the squad that Guardiola had, prime Barca, the golden years. I bet he’d play a 4-3-3 like this:
Valdes
Alves - Puyol - Pique - Abidal
Keita - Toure/Mascherano - Xavi/Iniesta
Henry - Etoo - Messi
It would never work.
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We will never know. Real Madrid hardly give him a chance and they never really wanted him in the first place. Still guardiola had easily the best Barca side and arguably best football side in the history of the game. My toy monkey could have won with that squad and the riches he had.
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Whole heartedly agree with you. I trust Lopetegui to lead the team into another successful season. No doubt he needs to do better, but we need to support him
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Just putting a few more things into context, if you go all the way back to 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons, we only managed two 9th place finishes and 50 points.
In the two seasons before Lope arrived we could only manage 6th and 7th place finishes, so we have come a long way.
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If we’re going back as far as 2011/12 then you could go back a bit further and recall the 2006-07 historical season. We’ve gone backwards in terms of exotic playing, tactics and style compared to that. Also don’t forget the 2014-15 season of Emery or the 2016-17 season of Sampaoli.
4th place is not new for Sevilla - we’ve achieved 3rd in 2008-09 with Manolo Jimenez and 4th in 2009-10 with Antonio Alvarez.
Two 4th place finishes and an EL (in special circumstances) do not make Lope our best coach in history. Juande Ramos won much more trophies and finished 3rd during his tenure. I have a hard time imaging Lope as our ‘savior’ because we were far from poor historically before he took charge.
However, compared to Berizzo, Montella and Pablo Machin… yeah he’s much better than them.
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