Q FM Africa's Modern Radio
The inevitable has happened.
After a dreadful start to a season in which they have lost four of their first 10 La Liga games and dropped to ninth in the table, Real Madrid have sacked Julen Lopetegui.
The identity of the man replacing him is something of a surprise, especially to outsiders. Santiago Solari is a relatively unknown figure even in Spain.
However, Real’s announcement of Solari’s appointment made it clear he is only a temporary measure, and there is a widespread assumption that a better-known figure will be recruited before long.
So what is going on at Real Madrid?
Is Solari the new Zidane?
Lopetegui’s fate was inevitable even before Sunday’s humiliating 5-1 El Clasico loss to Barcelona, and the widespread expectation in the wake of that defeat was that former Chelsea boss Antonio Conte would be the new boss at the Bernabeu.
However, Conte has not agreed terms with Real president Florentino Perez, and with Lopetegui’s position clearly untenable the club have been forced to take a short-term emergency measure by promoting B team coach Solari.
In many ways, there are strong similarities between the path trodden by Solari and his former team-mate Zinedine Zidane before the Frenchman’s appointment as manager in 2014.
They played together for Real during the early years of Perez’s presidency, with Argentine winger Solari making 148 appearances for Los Blancos between 2000 and 2005, albeit often from the bench.
Solari then departed for Inter Milan before finishing his playing career in his native South America, but he was lured back to the Bernabeu as youth-team coach in 2013 and graduated to become manager of the club’s B team – Real Madrid Castilla – in 2016, shortly after Zidane left that role to take over the first team.
So now he is taking the exact same step as Zidane: a trusted confidante of Perez who played for the club in the early 2000s and later took charge of Castilla, before being elevated to the senior squad during a mid-season crisis.
BBC