As he prepares Spain to walk out at Wembley on Tuesday, Lopetegui talks about a love affair with England that nearly led him to become the Wolves manager

Julen Lopetegui could have been in the West Midlands on Sunday, preparing for Preston; instead, he is on his way to Wembley. He had already begun working with the Chinese conglomerate seeking to buy Wolverhampton Wanderers when the phone rang. At the other end was Ángel María Villar, president of the Spanish Football Federation, with an offer he could not refuse. So Lopetegui turned away from Molineux and made for Madrid instead. On 21 July, Fosun International became the new owners of Wolves; on the same day, the man they wanted to lead them was unveiled as the coach of Spain’s national team.

His new office is on the first floor of Spain’s Las Rozas HQ, 25km north-west of the capital. Inherited from Vicente del Bosque, coach for eight years, winner of the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, a picture of some of those celebrations remains on the wall and Lopetegui has not yet made it his own. But the office, like his team, does look a little different now. Less familiar, less lived-in, most of the books gone from the shelf. He has been away a lot, after all – especially in England, where 36 Spaniards play in the Premier League, including seven of his squad, and where he might have set up home permanently. Had due diligence and the various checks at Molineux been completed sooner, the call could have been too late.

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“When the federation called, naturally my objective became the national team, but it’s true that before that [Wolves and I] had been working hand in hand for some time,” Lopetegui says. “It was very close but in the end it wasn’t to be. I enjoyed the time I spent with them; there were offers from the Premier League but their project was especially attractive. Wolves is a great club, where there would be significant investment and a desire to grow, to shine again.

“I’m passionate about English football; it’s lived in a special way, unique. There’s a culture of believing in mid- and long-term projects. Admittedly, that’s changing: the division with the most [managerial] changes in the world last season was the Championship. But there’s respect, a willingness to build properly, patience. Then there’s the fans’ passion. England invented football and the culture’s special. The challenge of bringing something new to English football was attractive; the chance to applying some of our culture, things I thought could help.”

There is a sense in Spain that English football needs that help, that its coaching lacks something and has been left behind. Put bluntly, that English coaches are not very good. “I wouldn’t dare to say that; it would be misplaced: I respect them too much, I’m sure there are fantastic coaches,” Lopetegui protests.

He does, though, see value in cross-fertilisation: England can, and has, gained from foreigners arriving there, Spaniards included. Nor, he says, is it one-sided. “Footballing cultures are enriched by ideas from outside. I don’t see the Premier League as a threat to La Liga. They can coexist fantastically well, there’s room for two or three good leagues. The national team [benefits] too. Years ago, the international experience [our] players had was reduced to European games. Now, lots of them have emigrated. Breaking down barriers, succeeding away from home, living in another country, another culture, different football, makes you much stronger. It’s also a reality: this is a globalised world with lots of strong markets, which obliges us to be alert to other leagues, especially England.”

Lopetegui could pick a team of Premier League footballers against England on Tuesday, although he grins knowingly when the list stalls at centre-back. There are many good players to choose from – “Every time we pick a squad we commit an injustice,” he says – and he is at the mercy of the clubs. Chelsea, say: “Cesc’s not playing as often as he did to begin with,” he says of Fàbregas. “In [Antonio] Conte’s system it’s hard to find a place for him. He’s a great player and if he was playing regularly I have no doubt that he’d be with us.”

Another player who is not there is Fàbregas’s Chelsea team-mate Diego Costa, forced to pull out of the squad on Thursday, to be replaced by the former Liverpool striker Iago Aspas. For Lopetegui, it is a pity: just when things were coming good. One goal in two years under Del Bosque for Costa was followed by three in two games under the new manager and the sense that, at last, he fits their football.

“That [improvement] is down to him,” Lopetegui says. “Diego lives football his way; we don’t want to change his character because it’s part of him. More has been said about that dark side but I prefer to talk about the good things. It’s ‘journalistic’ to talk about the controversy; that’s the world we live in. He’s conscious of what he is, what he represents. He’s a good kid: a nice lad, a joker, good to be around. With time, he’s growing, adapting. He’ll make a mistake some time, hopefully not with us, [but] that’s part of football.”

Another man looking at the new era with optimism is Manchester United’s Ander Herrera, called up for the first time and likely to make his debut at Wembley. “He’s a good player who has evolved; he’s intelligent and has adapted to what coaches have asked, surviving in a very physical football. He’s bringing together a team like Manchester United from the middle and playing well.”

Lopetegui knew Herrera from Spain’s youth setup. And that, he suggests, could be an advantage – one that draws parallels with his England counterpart, Gareth Southgate. Lopetegui, a former Real Madrid and Barcelona substitute goalkeeper who went to the 1994 World Cup but did not play a minute, was at Porto for the last two seasons but that is his only experience as a top-flight coach. His Spanish club coaching career is limited to 10 games with Rayo Vallecano in Spain’s second tier. Yet he spent four years with the federation, coaching Spain Under-19s and Under-20s, and the Under-21s to their European Championship win in 2013, and sees no reason why coaches such as Southgate should not progress from within.

“It’s no impediment, quite the opposite,” he says. “You know what a national team coach’s job is, the environment, the culture. There are specific factors that condition your work and you understand them. You compete in a couple of games every two months and your ‘Champions League’ is six or seven games in the summer. You have a lot of time to prepare and very little time to have an impact. You have to know how to condense your message and transmit it, find a way to ensure that the little ‘pill’ you give players is the right one, the right dose. There’s something enjoyable about the fact that you’re on edge, no margin.

“There’s an institutional dimension too: you represent your [country’s] football. That’s the bit that least attracts coaches but you do it willingly.”

It is the least attractive, but in the English case it can appear the most decisive. Venables, Eriksson, Hoddle, Allardyce, even Capello were all pushed towards the exit for reasons other than footballing failure. Lopetegui understands that and while he refuses to be drawn on Allardyce’s case, he says: “A coach – any coach, not just a national team coach – should try to be exemplary. And a national team manager even more so.” Then he adds: “I don’t think it makes you less of a coach to be exemplary, either. It should be innate.”

Lopetegui’s office is testament to the fact that this is a new Spain, but one where the old Spain remains present; the one that failed in Brazil in 2014 and in France in the summer and, more importantly, the one that went six years winning it all. As he steps out and heads down the stairs, he passes more pictures. In one of them, Iker Casillas holds the World Cup as captain but, aged 35 and with 167 caps, he is not here any more. How do you handle a case like that? “Naturally,” he says. “You have to follow what you believe in and be fair to the team. Some who last longer, some who you think respond well despite their age, some you think it’s not their time.”

Could England handle Wayne Rooney in a similar way? “Rooney? Personally, I like Rooney,” he shoots back, smiling.

It is not just Casillas, of course. Fewer and fewer of the men in the photos are still around: age, injury and form mean only two starters from the Euro 2012 final against Italy are in this squad. But they are still there, somehow, the men who must be emulated. Success remains the expectation. “Comparing generations won’t help us win,” Lopetegui insists. “The generation that’s just passed isn’t only without doubt the most brilliant in Spanish football history, it’s one of the best in history. Comparing anything to that is not fair. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t got good footballers: we have got good footballers, with ambition, personality, desire. Players who are making big steps, but who have to follow their path, not someone else’s.”

That path takes them to Wembley on Tuesday, under new management, against an old opponent, in a country familiar to many of them, for a game that it was easy for them to focus on too much. Lopetegui had to tell them to forget as they prepared for Macedonia in a World Cup qualifier on Saturday night, which they won 4-0, but he was looking forward to it as much as they were. “My team is Real Sociedad and I remember a 1-2 at Wembley [in March 1981] when Zamora and Satrustegui, who both played for La Real, scored,” he says. “When I was a kid, beating England was incredible; it always had greater repercussion than beating anyone else. They’ve always been a reference point; they have so much history. This will be a special match, for sure.”

‘It’s nice to have played with the Spain manager’

“Mark Draper!” Lopetegui says, smiling. “Yes, yes, I remember Mark. I didn’t speak much English then, I must admit, but he was a nice guy. Where is he now?”

Now, he runs his Draper Norton football academy in Nottingham; back then, the former Leicester City and Aston Villa midfielder was Lopetegui’s team-mate, playing under Juande Ramos at Rayo Vallecano in the east of Madrid. It didn’t last long, just four months in fact, but the experience was a good one. And, Draper says: “It’s nice to have played with the Spain manager.”

“It was deadline day, in January 2000,” Draper recalls. “I think it started with a recommendation from Atlético Madrid. I’d played in the Uefa Cup with Aston Villa and we had played a lot of Spanish sides and done pretty well: Atlético, Athletic Bilbao, Celta. So I think it came from there. I had fallen out of the Villa team. It was a Monday morning and someone called. I literally had an hour or two to make up my mind and I thought: ‘Why not?’” Did he know anything about Rayo? “Not particularly,” Draper laughs. “I knew they were in Madrid and that they were doing OK, but not much else.”

In Madrid, but not Madrid. Rayo played in the small, 14,000-capacity Estadio Teresa Rivero, with just three stands and a wall at one end. It is located down in the tough, consciously left-wing and working-class neighbourhood of Vallecas. Rayo are a bit different, a top-tier team that in terms of size Draper likens to a Championship club, a “family club” and an “unusual” one too. Players got paid in person at the club’s offices on a Friday – when they got paid. Away trips meant long bus journeys.

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When Draper arrived, he was met by an Englishman called Colin and put up in a city-centre hotel. Steve McManaman, then at Real Madrid, became a friend and he spent time with some of Madrid’s players: Christian Karembeu, Guti, Raúl. In the Rayo team, his room-mate was the American goalkeeper Kasey Keller, who played ahead of Lopetegui that 1999-2000 season, and he was helped especially by the Dutch midfielder Dave van den Bergh, who spoke perfect English.

“The first thing I learned to say in Spanish was how to get from the hotel to the stadium, so that I could tell the taxi drivers,” Draper says. He got involved as best he could, especially on those bus trips, but didn’t have time to pick up much more.

“I didn’t really know what to expect, but I really enjoyed it,” he says. “It was a more ‘total football’, more of a keep-ball game than in England. Not a slower pace, exactly, but less frantic, a bit different. The style suited me but Juande Ramos wanted me to play a little bit out of position, to the right, which was a bit of a problem.

“I was sub at Real Madrid, I played at Espanyol, in the Olympic Stadium, I played at Real Sociedad. I didn’t get on at the Bernabéu, which was a pity. In the end, I only played a few games, four or five. But the team did very well and I enjoyed it.

“At the end of the season, the loan came to an end but I didn’t go back to Villa: I signed for Southampton. I would have loved to have played more and maybe stayed, but going to Spain was a great experience.”