Reports suggest that West Ham could replace Julen Lopetegui with former Borussia Dortmund coach Edin Terzić – but is he right for the job?
The Premier League season may only be eight games old, but West Ham United’s rough start to the season means that new head coach Julen Lopetegui is already having to endure speculation about his position – and a dismal 4-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur at the weekend hasn’t exactly helped matters.
It’s no surprise, then, to see rumours about potential replacements working their way around the internet already. One which may excite quite a few Hammers fans came on Tuesday morning courtesy of Sky Sports Germany reporter Florian Plettenberg, who claims that former Borussia Dortmund head coach Edin Terzić, who guided the German side to the Champions League final in May, is a candidate if West Ham’s owners do decide to drop the axe on Lopetegui.
Terzić wouldn’t be a new face at the London Stadium – he was a member of Slaven Bilić’s coaching team between 2015 and 2017, and according to Plettenberg has a “good reputation” within the club. Whether those old ties would be enough to draw Terzić to the club is unclear, but the link isn’t necessarily all that unrealistic.
The idea of appointing a manager who was coaching in the Champions League final just a few short months ago would probably get a few fans excited, not least because despite significant investment in the playing squad over the summer, Lopetegui has yet to get anything resembling a tune out of his team. Something has to change, and if the Spaniard doesn’t turn things around rapidly, it may well be him.
But although Terzić, who left Dortmund at the end of the season by mutual consent, has that remarkable European run on his CV alongside a win percentage which comes in at just over 66% over his 156 matches with the Bundesliga side – the only club he has ever managed – there would be some significant question marks over whether he was suitable for the role.
Elements of his tactics may be mismatched with the players who would be at his disposal. In attack, Terzić relied heavily on long balls forward combined with aggressive full-back play upfield to provide width from front to back, and looked for fast overloads on the flanks. It isn’t clear whether the full-backs at West Ham’s disposal, most notably Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who is much stronger in defence than he is coming forward, would be up to that challenge or have the raw speed required to be effective in such a role.
His Dortmund teams also tended to have the weakness of a midfield that could be isolated and pressured a little too easily, and that’s with players who were quicker and more dynamic than West Ham’s own central players, who have so far looked sluggish on and off the ball. In the 2022/23 season, when Dortmund only missed out on the Bundesliga title to Bayern Munich on goal difference, they were often bailed out in possession by the astonishing dynamism of Jude Bellingham. When he left, Dortmund struggled with ball retention and creation through the middle, and while their Champions League run took them all the way to Wembley, they finished fifth in the league and didn’t qualify for this season’s edition.
With pressing, pace and direct passing (Dortmund played the most long balls of any Bundesliga side last season) all key elements of Terzić’s strategy, it’s debatable as to how good of a fit he would be for a squad that doesn’t necessarily seem to be well-constructed for his requirements – but Dortmund fans also had plenty of issues with occasionally chaotic performances and a perceived failure to improve results compared with predecessor Marco Rose or to develop young talent.
Terzić’s detractors in the stands at Signal Iduna Park, of which there was no great shortage, felt that hotly-tipped young players like Karim Adeyemi and Youssoufa Moukoko (who has now left the club) didn’t improve as quickly as might have been expected at a club who have built a reputation as one of Europe’s great nurseries of talent. It doesn’t help that too many of the players he signed in the transfer market failed to live up to expectations, although at West Ham transfers would likely remain the remit of technical director Tim Steidten.
Terzić didn’t play attractive football at Dortmund, and that alone created frustration with the fans, who had come to expect a more fluid, possession-based approach from their club – perhaps some elements of that style would work well at West Ham, and there are comparisons to be made with David Moyes’ style of football, but while Terzić often wants his defence to drop deep off the ball and get the ball forward as quickly as possible, he also asks that his team push right up the field quickly when they get the ball up the other end of the pitch. That requires a great deal of speed and endurance.
Even if Terzić can find the means to compromise between his preferences and the resources available at West Ham, it’s hard to imagine that the football he plays would differ so much in terms of its fundamentals from that played by David Moyes, who was essentially sacked in part due to a style that was beginning to grate. Terzić is ultimately a manager who asks for similar things but demands his players run more.
None of this is to suggest that Terzić isn’t a capable manager, or that he couldn’t succeed admirably at the right club. As much as he frustrated many Dortmund fans and even players, he still won plenty of matches and came within an inch of a title. But could West Ham’s full-backs get up and down the field quickly enough to give Terzić the width he wants? Could their midfielders quickly shuttle back and forth and get the ball up to the front line accurately? And are players like Jarrod Bowen and Mohammed Kudus at their best chasing long passes? If not, then Terzić may not be the right man for the job.
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