On the face of it, Queens Park Rangers have hired an unknown quantity.
Marti Cifuentes has never managed in England and never won silverware as a head coach, but the QPR board have been aware of the Spaniard’s success abroad for well over a year.
Cifuentes was a leading candidate for the Rangers job last summer, eventually losing out to Michael Beale.
But, after Gareth Ainsworth was sacked on Saturday following a sixth straight defeat that left the Hoops 23rd in the Championship, Cifuentes finally has his chance to take the reins at Loftus Road.
Cifuentes was appointed on Monday night and was flying to England today, with QPR keen for the 41-year-old to take charge of Saturday’s crucial visit to relegation rivals Rotherham.
👔 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜'𝗦 𝗥 𝗠𝗔𝗡 👔
— QPR FC (@QPR) October 30, 2023
We're delighted to announce the appointment of our new head coach, Martí Cifuentes! 🇪🇸@MCC14 🤝
Eager for life as a manager straight after his unheralded playing career ended in 2010, Cifuentes studied at the Johan Cruyff Institute upon his retirement. He idolises Cruyff and the way he wants his teams to play is heavily influenced by the Dutch legend.
His style of football is in stark contrast to Ainsworth.
Fluid with the systems and formations he has used throughout his career, Cifuentes’s sides tend to adopt a 3-2-5 build-up in attack, also favoured by teams such as Manchester City and England.
He will want QPR to dominate the ball more and play out from the back.
Cifuentes managed to secure a youth coach role at the prestigious Ajax academy. Then followed his first — and until now most recent — venture into English football, when he spent a week shadowing youth coaches at Arsenal before gaining an academy role at Millwall.
When he took the step into senior management as head coach of third-tier side UE Sant Andreu in 2014, he became the youngest manager in Spanish professional football aged 31.
He travelled to Scandinavia in 2016 and became manager at Norwegian outfit Sandefjord. Cifuentes inherited a side who had made a woeful start to the season and could not avoid relegation.
Soon he was managing in Denmark with Aalborg, before the opportunity arose to become head coach of Swedish side Hammarby in 2021.
Cifuentes was surprised by how tactically primitive the Swedish top-flight was. Most teams still adopted the direct style Roy Hodgson had brought with him in the 1970s and 80s. But Cifuentes was part of a shift to a possession-based style that brought Swedish domestic football into a new age.
Despite Hammarby selling eight of their starting XI ahead of the 2022 season, Cifuentes was still able to mastermind a third-place finish. His side had the best goal difference in the division, qualified for the Europa Conference League and reached the final of the Swedish Cup.
Cifuentes is now expected to take a keen interest in QPR’s youth system.
“We must always look to the academy first”, he said in a recent interview.
