Real Madrid were supposed to be celebrating the league title the night the president called time on the manager and the captain. It was 2003 and a season of tension and fraught relationships exploded at the restaurant where Florentino Pérez ended the Real careers of Fernando Hierro and Vicente del Bosque.
Now they are two of the last three Spain managers. In between, the third man, Julen Lopetegui, was sacked by Spain the day before the World Cup began – because he signed for Real. None of which would be especially striking 15 years later except that, as Spain face Iran on Wednesday, a fourth man completed this curious, convoluted circle in Kazan.
The manager Real chose to replace Del Bosque in 2003 was Carlos Queiroz – and he has revealed that virtually the first thing he did was try to persuade Real to bring back Hierro. He failed but they will come together, facing each other in charge of Iran and Spain.
“I have been wearing these clothes for a long time,” Queiroz said, while Hierro said: “I came here in a suit and I will leave in a tracksuit.”
Queiroz’s coaching career goes back 37 years while Hierro has had a solitary season as a manager, at second-tier Real Oviedo, and had no intention of occupying this or any bench until crisis broke out. But the Iran manager still insisted: “Hierro is the right person to unite a fractured Spain.
“Everyone who has been in the game for a long time knows that football is always capable of showing you something new, so it is not a surprise [that Spain sacked Lopetegui],” Queiroz said. “Things can change at any moment. It was a strange situation and it has passed now. But it’s ironic for me: I fought so much, I tried so hard with [Real’s sporting director] Jorge Valdano to have Hierro as a player, to save the situation. I fought so much for that … and now I have him on the other bench.
“He knows I admire him. The decision was difficult but knowing him well, his quality, he’s the right person. He’s a man, a personality, who for sure can do this. We saw against Portugal that the sacking was not noticed at all.”