Westham United have named Julen Lopetegui as their new head coach. He will officially start working on the 1st of July.
David Moyes ended his four and a half year spell in charge at the end of the season. He won the UEFA Europa Conference League title in 2023 which was Westham's first major trophy in 43 years. This was David Moyes' second spell as the Westham manager.
After leaving Wolverhampton Wonderers on the eve of the 2023/24 season, Julen Lopetegui has been out of football. However, the Spaniard has an impressive CV, he won the Europa League with Sevilla in 2020 after a brief time in charge of Real Madrid and two years as the manager of Spain's national team.
His major task will be to get Westham back into Europe following the club's ninth place finish in the Premier league.
Julen Lopetegui said the following on Westham's website;
I feel very happy, first of all, to be able to be part of the future of this big Club. We will try to put our stamp on the Club.I feel that we have a fantastic platform. I think the last few years have been very good years to have this base, of course, but my ambition as a coach is always to be better and better, to achieve more and bigger aims and to encourage and improve the players, the team, and to compete because football is about this – to compete. We are very ambitious about this. I am where I want to be. I am here because I want to be here and for us it was a fantastic day when we closed our agreement here because our commitment is 100 per cent to be here. We had other opportunities but I am very happy that West Ham chose me because I chose West Ham too, so we are really happy about this. We came here with the idea and the thought to make a big, big noise. That's why we came here, and we are excited by this challenge. Of course, we are going to do our best to help the Club and the team to achieve, to achieve the best level and to achieve our aims. I assure the fans that they are going to be key in all our achievements.
Westham haven't yet confirmed the length of Lopetegui's contract, however, Lopetegui is bringing in a new backroom team after the club announced that first team coaches Billy McKinlay, Kevin Nolan, John Heitinga and Henry Newman have left. But Xavi Valero is to continue his role as goalkeeper coach.
Pablo Sanz, Oscar Caro, Juan Vicente Peinado, Borja De Alba and Edu Rubio will join Julen Lopetegui as the new backroom team.
