Squad news
LOTINA’S BIG MOUTH
17 Jul 2011
Former coach Lotina said when he left Depor that he was going in silence, but the true is that he has talked a lot and his declarations have been polemic. The most recent ones were the criticism towards Manuel Pablo and Juan Dominguez.
Miguel Ángel Lotina is “playing” with the nerves of Depor’s fans; during his good-bye speech the Basque man said that he will remain sidelined from Depor in order to not been an obstacle for the Segunda campaign, but things have been different as he has been talking a lot since leaving the club and instead of been positive, his comments have criticized some aspects of the club.
It all started on June 13, day in which Basque news agency Deia.com published an interview in which Lotina criticized the work done at Abegondo, ”Yes, the work with the youth teams in a professional sense exists at Abegondo, but only since ten years ago. I was pulling players, but it was more for a necessity, because there is no base to promote six or seven players. I promoted some players, but it was an exaggeration, because it was a forced situation and without knowing if they were prepared to be professional players in the near future.”
The club maintained silence after these declarations were published, some days later a female journalist asked president Lendoiro about this issue, and Depor’s boss just said that, I don’t believe it; it’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s that I don’t believe that he said those exact words to Deia. I don’t believe it.”
And the history continued on this week; Lotina was in La Coruña solving some pending issues with Depor [the club still owes money to him] and he took advantage of it to participate in a public forum in Lugo that was analyzing the present of football. During his speech there were only twenty spectators, but there was a camera tapping the declarations for the Galician television (TVG) and his speech was spread on TV.
The most notorious comments were his criticism towards the lack of interest of the players in order to learn new things, more specifically he mentioned some problems trying to teach new things to young midfielder Juan Dominguez and veteran right-back defender Manuel Pablo.
“The players don’t want to learn... Juan Dominguez, as example, I have a lot of confidence on him, but he suffers a lot in order to reach the area, mainly by the air… Manuel Pablo, 35-years-old, I told him that I was going to teach him how to release a good cross, well I didn’t achieve it. He is already 35 and in four years he has only released one good cross. I told him how to put the leg and to not look to the goal, but it didn’t happen.” Lotina said.
This time there was a reaction coming from the same players, firstly Juan Dominguez said during an interview that if he didn’t improve it was because he was playing in a different position, ”Clearly it is a pending issue; I must improve it and polish this factor. What Lotina said was true, though I didn’t have too many chances as a playmaker. I believe I only played a few matches on that function and the best way to learn is to see yourself performing there, then you can correct the errors, but you can’t improve a thing that you aren’t practicing. Yes, I have to improve my performance as a playmaker, but later I ended playing as a winger, then it isn’t helpful. In that case I will improve as a winger. But it’s true that I need to change several things.
Later it was Manuel Pablo the one that defended himself, ” "That I can't release good crosses? I gave six assist in my first year, so those stats are wrong. It is true that we practiced this issue in some occasions, but it was more a joke than a serious training. We all know him [Lotina] and know how he is, but this thing won’t change our relation." The Canarian told to Marca.
Even other players have entered into this public discussion, on Thursday former player Iago Iglesias was defending the current captain of Deportivo, ”I scored my first goal at Primera thanks to a cross coming from Manuel Pablo.” he wrote on his Twitter account.
The media is also unwelcoming the polemic, during the week on-line newspaper El Confidencial published an article hammering Lotina and the name of the news piece talks by itself, Lotina, or how to lose the credit through relegations and unfortunate words.” Of course this situation has also created some jokes, like the comment of a fan published on Twitter, The information on Manuel Pablo is wrong, a member of the Riazor Blues has told that he has collected 186 crosses sent by the player [The Riazor Blues sit behind one of the goals at the stadium].”
In the end the former coach of Depor is just doing the opposite thing than he said as he didn’t leave the club in silence, which isn’t positive as it creates a distraction for a team that can’t allow any error if they want to achieve the promotion to Primera División.