Porto coach in it for the long haul

LONDON — The Basque Country, straddling Spain’s north-west border with France, is home to some idiosyncratic sports. There is pelota, a little like squash except, in its pure form, you project a hard ball with lightly bandaged palms instead of with a racquet. Go a bit more rural and there is an even more manly event: Stone lifting, a contest to find the local Obelix, quite a spectacle when he is heaving rocks against the clock.

Jose Antonio Lopetegui Aranguren ranks as a legend of the discipline. He would draw crowds in villages well into his 50s. At his peak, he registered 22 lifts of a 100kg stone within a minute. Lopetegui is now in his mid-80s, retired from his peculiar form of clean and jerk. As of last Wednesday, he can declare he is not the only proven heavyweight of the family.

Julen Lopetegui, son of Jose Antonio, is head coach of Porto, who will tonight (tomorrow morning, Singapore time) become the Asterix and Obelix of the 2015 Champions League if they complete the task set in compelling motion in the first leg of their quarter-final against Bayern Munich.

The second-best team in Portugal go to the home of the Bundesliga’s champions and soaraway league leaders 3-1 up and with their Spanish manager 90 minutes from being celebrated as a cannier negotiator of Europe’s most prestigious club competition than any of the many Porto coaches post-Jose Mourinho. The club have not reached a semi-final in the 11 years since Mourinho brought the trophy to Porto.

Lopetegui, 48, had an up-and-down playing career. Identified in his teens as next baton-carrier for a long line of very fine Basque goalkeepers, he joined Real Madrid’s youth set-up and later won a cap for Spain. He then endured a frustrating spell at the Barcelona of Johan Cruyff and Bobby Robson in the 1990s, being injured for periods and a backup for most of the time.

But he made some enduring friendships at Camp Nou, including that of Pep Guardiola, who is now in charge at Bayern. The relationship developed as they moved into coaching. Lopetegui managed Spain’s national youth teams, with great success, while Guardiola was in charge of Barcelona’s reserve and then first team, so they liaised often.

Last month, the two men sat together, chatty, in Madrid’s Vicente Calderon Stadium to watch Atletico beat Bayer Leverkusen in the last-16 stage of the European Cup. Within 48 hours, Guardiola and Lopetegui learnt that they would be in opposition, for the first time as managers, in the next round. So Lopetegui began plotting: How to have his men press up aggressively on Bayern’s centre-halves, how to worry Bayern on the counter-attack and how to ensure the muscular striker Jackson Martinez eased back from injury in time for the first leg.

“He deserves every congratulation,” Guardiola said of how Porto’s coach had organised their coup and of what was evidently an assured half-time gee-up from Lopetegui. Bayern, 2-0 down early at the Dragao, had finished the opening 45 minutes stronger and reduced the deficit to a single goal. Porto then regained their two-goal advantage and their poise.

There is already a long, loud list of recriminations at Bayern for the shock defeat — senior members of the club’s medical staff resigned after they sensed they had been blamed for the defeat — and of excuses: The maladroit displays of defenders, Dante and Jerome Boateng, the absence of injured wingers Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery. Less amplified has been praise for Lopetegui and his efforts in galvanising the youngest squad in Porto’s recent history — a unit largely put together in the past 10 months and, as the scorer of two of the first-leg goals, Ricardo Quaresma, put it, a “team without superstars”.

Any coach who can draw a tune consistently from Quaresma ought to gain the admiration of his peers. The 31-year-old winger has on his resume of employers a Who’s Who of Champions League winners — Barcelona, Chelsea, Internazionale — but was never a regular contributor to any of their triumphs. “We have asked more of Ricardo this season,” Lopetegui said.

Safe to report that Quaresma, deft dribbler and occasional launcher of spectacular strikes from distance, is not one of the game’s sturdy stone lifters. But Lopetegui has stimulated something. He made a significant, one-off gesture of faith in the enigmatic Quaresma at the very beginning of the season, by giving him the captain’s armband.

The Porto coach needed his senior players to act as seniors. Many of their younger colleagues are very obviously passing through, sights set elsewhere.

This is a club of high turnover, which scouts effectively, particularly in South America, and makes a major sale most summers. Porto have this year guaranteed themselves the scheduled £24 million (S$48.3 million) transfer of the Brazilian full back Danilo to Real Madrid.

Other contributors to their rousing Champions League run were borrowed. The midfield gains much of its energy from the on-loan Casemiro from Real Madrid and Oliver Torres from Atletico Madrid. Eliminate Bayern and there is a fair chance of Porto meeting either Casemiro’s or Torres’ parent club in the semi-final, or playing Barcelona, which have lent them winger Cristian Tello, 23. Tello, out of the Bayern tie with injury, hopes to recover by next month.

Eliminate Bayern, and Lopetegui’s reputation will rise. This is his first full season as a senior coach of a top-flight club, and though Porto trail Benfica by three points in the domestic table, the achievements of their Champions League journey, from topping their group to blitzing Basel 5-1 on aggregate and outfoxing Guardiola’s Bayern, make for a sound portfolio for a manager new to the competition.

Hence the murmurs that have him shortlisted by Real Madrid as a prospective next boss at the Bernabeu. But Lopetegui says he is committed, long-term, to Porto. He told the newspaper AS: “This is not a trampoline job for me,” promising three more years of carefully lifting the right foundation stones into place.

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