Carlos Corberán, the Leeds first-team coach, has been confirmed as Huddersfield’s manager.
Huddersfield expressed interest in Corberán last month and made the Spaniard, one of Marcelo Bielsa’s influential assistants, their primary target to replace Danny Cowley, who was sacked on Sunday. The Championship club did not give details regarding his contract.
Corberán, who was also Leeds’s under-23s coach, is highly rated by Bielsa but the club oped not to stand in the 37-year-old’s way. He joined Leeds in 2017, a year before Bielsa, having previously worked with Manuel Pellegrini and Ernesto Valverde at Valencia.
“Last year he had some opportunities to leave to become a first-team [head] coach and I ask him to stay one year because we had an unfinished job,” said the Leeds owner, Andrea Radrizzani, on Monday. “He did stay and now he needs to have the credit to enjoy this moment of success. I think now it is good he can take his own way, his own path and start his new journey as a first-team coach. He deserves it.”
Corberán’s only previous experience as a head coach was in Cyprus, and he also worked as a coach at Villarreal and as an assistant in Saudi Arabia. The hiring of Corberán mirrors Huddersfield’s appointments of David Wagner, who led the club into the Premier League, and Jan Siewert, the former Borussia Dortmund reserve-team manager who was sacked in August.