José Luis Mendilibar can’t be bothered with the bullshit. Enjoyably potty-mouthed, as direct in the press room as on the pitch, he is, he says, the anti-modern manager. He tells it the way it is, challenges fools and takes on authority, doesn’t like VAR – a circus, he calls it – and definitely doesn’t like the theatre, insisting: “We’re a bunch of cheats in La Liga; touch us and it’s like someone killed us.” He doesn’t have an iPad, doesn’t think much of the stats and doesn’t mind saying so. He reckons too many training grounds look like airports – cones and arrows and God-knows-what all over the place – and too many coaches hang around there all day to make a point, not a difference.
As for him, he never wanted to be a manager at all, but once he started with tiny CD Arratia in 1994, he couldn’t stop, not one season going by without him working. This was all set to be the first in almost 30 years, the past 14 of those in the top division, until a call came from the dressing room at the Coliseum, around the time the clásico was kicking off a fortnight ago. Sevilla had just been beaten in Getafe, their third defeat in four games in which 12 goals were conceded. Two points above relegation, their coach had lost control and, desperate now, the sporting director Monchi needed someone to save them.
