Reports this week have been focused around how long Julen Lopetegui will get before being shown the door by West Ham.
The drab 0-0 home draw with fellow strugglers before the international break only saw calls for the Spaniard to be sacked get a lot louder.
After three wins from the Hammers’ opening 11 Premier League games, Lopetegui is under immense pressure and many believed the club would decide to part ways with him over the international break.
However, he’s still in his post and preparing to face Newcastle United at St. James’ Park on Monday night. The Guardian, though, reported earlier this week that if he fails to get positive results against the Magpies and then against Arsenal at home the following weekend, the former Real Madrid boss will be sacked.
The club have been doing their homework on potential replacements for some weeks now, with the likes of Roger Schmidt, Sebastian Hoeness and Kasper Hjulmand said to be on the shortlist.
But Edin Terzic‘s name continues to be touted as the club’s number one choice, with the former Borussia Dortmund boss being out of work since resigning from the Bundesliga outfit earlier this year.
Terzic had a spell at West Ham as Slaven Bilic’s assistant between 2015 and 2017, so will know the club well already, but has since become one of Europe’s most sought after young tactictians after taking Dortmund to the Champions League final last season and only losing out to Bayern Munich to the Bundesliga title on goal difference the season before.
Now, TBR Football claim technical director Tim Stiedten has made contact with Terzic to see whether he has the appetite to return to east London, this time as West Ham’s main man in the dugout.
This seems like a significant development in the ‘will he won’t he’ saga surrounding Lopetegui’s immediate West Ham future. Up to now there have only been reports of the club being interested in certain managers around Europe. Now contact has been supposedly been made with one of them, it seems the club is making very serious moves to ensure they’re ready to make a quick switch in the dugout should they need to.
West Ham the perfect project for Terzic
On the face of it, West Ham represents an attractive project for a manager like Terzic. The calibre of players he would have at his disposal would give him an impressive foundation to build something exciting at London Stadium.
Mohammed Kudus, Jarrod Bowen, Cyrsencio Summerville and Lucas Paqueta offer the attacking flair that most managers across the continent would be happy to have, while Edson Alvarez, Jean-Clair Todibo and Max Kilman offer tenacity and defensive stability both in midfield and defence. The rest of the squad has enough quality there to be a real success with the right tactics.
Terzic is now stranger to managing top class talent. While at Dortmund, his squad boasted the likes of Jude Bellingham, Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho.
And he also has no problems in developing good relationships with his star players. Back in 2021, after Dortmund beat Sevilla in the Champions League, Haaland said: “Edin has been good and I’ve been talking a lot with him.
“He said today would be my game and that I would get my chances and I did, so it was an important win.”
Having the best striker in the world sing his praises as a manager shows just how well respected Terzic is, so he would arrive with a certain level of pedigree that West Ham could really benefit from if he does arrive.
It’s not yet clear whether Terzic is indeed interested in replacing Lopetegui, or what the details of Stiedten’s contact with him are, but there is no doubt the German would represent something of a coup if he were to take the job in future.
