César Laínez · Biography

César Láinez Sanjuán won his first trophy in the 2001 Copa del Rey with Real Zaragoza, the club of his home city. Born in Zaragoza on 10 April 1977, he was a goalkeeper and spent almost his entire playing career with the Aragonese side. He also won the 2004 Copa del Rey and the Spanish Super Cup that same year. Injuries forced him to retire in May 2005, and years later he returned to the club as coach of its reserve team and, for a few months in 2017, of the first team.

Youth career at Real Zaragoza

Láinez came through the Zaragoza academy. In 1994 he made his debut for Real Zaragoza B, the club’s reserve side, and kept goal there for four seasons, until 1998. Those were years of learning in the third tier of Spanish football, the step before the first team for the club’s young players. In the 1998-99 season he was promoted to the Real Zaragoza senior squad. At youth international level he played for Spain’s under-20 side.

Loan to Villarreal and La Liga debut

With little prospect of playing time at La Romareda, in the winter of 1999 Real Zaragoza loaned him to Villarreal CF until the end of the season. With the Castellón club he made his La Liga debut on 7 February 1999. That half-season loan gave him his first games in the top flight and the experience a young goalkeeper needed before returning to Zaragoza. In the summer of 1999 he went back to the club that had developed him, where he stayed until the end of his career.

Six seasons in the first team

Between 1999 and 2005 he was part of the Real Zaragoza squad, a period in which the club won three trophies. In 2001 he lifted the Copa del Rey, the first title of his career. Three years later the club won the same competition again with the 2004 Copa del Rey, and that same year Zaragoza claimed the 2004 Spanish Super Cup. Injuries shaped the final part of that spell. In May 2005, aged 28, he announced his retirement as a player, having worn no shirts other than those of Real Zaragoza, its reserve team and Villarreal.

First steps in the dugout

His coaching career also began at Real Zaragoza. In 2014 he joined the reserve team’s staff as assistant to Emilio Larraz. In October of that year the club handed him control of the side, which played in the Spanish third tier, Segunda División B, and Láinez replaced Larraz as head coach of Real Zaragoza B. He led the reserves, later renamed Deportivo Aragón, from 2014 to 2017, working with a squad of academy players on the transition to professional football.

First-team coach in 2017

On 19 March 2017 Real Zaragoza appointed him first-team coach, with the side in the Spanish second division and the task of securing survival. Láinez saw out the season on the La Romareda bench and, once the campaign ended, returned to the reserve team. He coached Deportivo Aragón again in 2017-18, a season that ended with the side relegated from Segunda División B. In June 2018 his departure from Real Zaragoza was made official, after more than two decades tied to the club as player and coach.

Conquense and Teruel

Away from Zaragoza, in 2019 he coached UB Conquense in Segunda División B. That same year he took charge of CD Teruel, in the Spanish fourth tier, Tercera División, and led the team through the 2019-20 season, the campaign cut short by the pandemic and settled with a fast-track promotion play-off. His spell on the Teruel bench ended in 2020.