Coach Jul.
Born in Spain, raised in Galdakao, Bizkaia, ten miles from Bilbao, in the region that produces futbolistas like nowhere else in Europe.
There is no region in Europe that produces futbolistas the way Bizkaia does. Athletic Bilbao, the province's club, fields only players born or developed in the Basque Country, a restriction no other elite side in the world imposes on itself, and has still never been relegated from Spain's top flight, one of only three clubs that can make that claim.
It works because the surrounding towns are dense with development clubs that feed it: Danok Bat, Santutxu, Sestao River, Getxo. A kid in Bizkaia is inside a serious fútbol structure by the time he's seven, and the standard he's measured against is set by a first team playing in the Champions League.
That's the environment Julen grew up in, and it isn't a soft one. Basque fútbol is not a place where a young player's concern is the newest cleats or the sharpest kit. It is industrial country, and the game there carries the character of it: you are judged on whether you can play, whether you compete, and whether you're still there next season. Nobody is impressed by anything else.
- UEFA B LicenceRFEF · SPANISH FOOTBALL FEDERATION
- UEFA A LicenceRFEF · SPANISH FOOTBALL FEDERATION
- UEFA Pro LicenceTHE HIGHEST COACHING QUALIFICATION IN EUROPE
- Master's in Football Business & Sports ManagementJOHAN CRUYFF INSTITUTE
- Business AdministrationBACHELOR'S EQUIVALENT
- Founder & DirectorORIGIN FC · GOAL CRAFT PROJECT
- Development Director & CoachINDEPENDIENTE DEL VALLE NJ
- DirectorNJ CRUSH FC
- Collaborator, Development ProgramATHLETIC CLUB BILBAO
- Director of MethodologyRCD ESPANYOL DE BARCELONA · NEW JERSEY
- CoachNEW YORK GALICIA
- CoachBARCELONA RESIDENCY ACADEMY · CALIFORNIA
A demanding place to be a child.
The standard doesn't adjust to your circumstances.
Julen learned that at eight years old. Family, for him, had been something assembled rather than given. He was adopted young, and by the time he was in the academy system there was less of it left than there had been. His mother had left. His father worked long hours and was rarely home. He was measured every season, in an environment where there was no version of it in which he could coast, and no one at home to absorb the pressure when it built up.
At fifteen, he didn't make the final cut.
He stopped playing for a year. The fútbol he came back to was recreational, with friends, and it lasted about as long as his patience for it. He needed the standard back. That same year he made his senior debut, playing against grown men, at sixteen.
Playing and coaching, at once.
From seventeen he ran two careers in parallel. He kept playing, moving between clubs in the Spanish league system, and started coaching in youth academies, while studying Business Administration and Law, and earning his first UEFA coaching licence alongside the degree. At twenty he took charge of his first competitive team at Getxo. First professional contract at twenty-three. Nobody shortened the route for him.
Those same clubs became his workplace. For over a decade he coached wherever he played: Danok Bat, Santutxu, Sestao River, Balmaseda, Getxo, the pathways that have produced Iñigo Lekue, Ander Capa, Unai Gómez, Dani Vivian, Unai Vencedor, Malcom Adu Ares and Ibai Gómez. He coached inside that system and learned its methods from within, working through the Spanish federation's coaching structure to the UEFA Pro Licence, the highest qualification in European fútbol, the standard required to manage at the top of the professional game. Today he continues to collaborate with Athletic Bilbao's development program.
From Bizkaia to New Jersey.
At twenty-five he travelled to Los Angeles with Barça Academy. The trip clarified everything: if he was going to build a life in fútbol, it would be through developing players, not playing. COVID postponed the plan and he returned to Spain's second and third divisions. But at twenty-nine he left both his playing career and his work as a legal advisor, and moved to New Jersey to coach with RCD Espanyol.
He met his wife at thirty. They married in Valencia at thirty-two.
Being visible.
What drove him was being visible. He wanted the twelve-year-olds he coached in the morning to watch him play for the senior side that weekend and think: that's where I want to be.
He hadn't had that. It was the thing he could give.
He now brings two decades inside the Spanish development model to the players of New Jersey: the same method, the same standard, and the same principle he learned at eight years old.
