In his first interview after being appointed Director of Football Strategy, Damien Comolli reveals his vision for Liverpool Football Club.
First of all Damien, what does Director of Football Strategy mean?Obviously it means that I will look after the football side of the club, most of it or part of it. There are areas where I will be more involved with and I think what's important is the word 'strategy'. For me strategy means the future so I need to make sure we know where we are going looking forward and know what we are doing in the future to take the club forward.
It's a new role for Liverpool Football Club - why did you think it was an important role for you to come and fill?First of all I'd like to say I'm very honoured and very proud by the fact that I'm the first in the club's history, in a club with such a massive tradition and history. I think it was just a feeling between the owners and Roy as well that they wanted someone to be in there and come and help on a daily basis, support Roy in terms of making sure there is the best structure around all the club in all the areas which are football related. It's not only day to day stuff, but as I just said, the future, and that comes back to strategy. I think John Henry and Tom Werner really wanted someone to be in there to look at what we are going to do for the future.
What was the attraction of LFC?I might probably say something you have heard a lot of times. When I was a kid there were three teams everyone was talking about in France. One was St Etienne, where I come from, one was Liverpool and the other one was Bayern Munich. At the time St Etienne was dominating French football and the other two were dominating European football and maybe world football. For me, as a Frenchman, Liverpool is just something unbelievable, the size of the club, the history, the tradition, and since I've been here I haven't been disappointed on that part because you can feel it through the city, and obviously at the two games I attended at Anfield. It's just fantastic to be here and to be part of this fantastic organisation with such history and tradition, and being involved with sitting down with Kenny Dalglish to ask him some questions about the club in the past, how did it work, how did he feel when he joined the club etc. It's just fantastic and the feedback I get from a lot of people in France is the same reaction as me. Football people my age or older, Liverpool is just there.
Liverpool and St Etienne have history on the pitch - you were at that club on two occasions so was it difficult to leave for a second time to come here?It was very difficult to leave because I had a very, very good relationship with the manager there. We had two very, very difficult seasons, the one before last and last season, but this season we had a fantastic start and were top of the league for the first time in 26 years, or something like this. I had a great relationship with the coach and with the coaching staff from the academy, but I felt this was a great opportunity for me to come here, too good to turn down. I was not always in line with the ownership at St Etienne so it was probably the right thing for me to do, to move, and the people there understood it very well.
So here at Liverpool what will you do on a day to day basis?As I said, it's being involved in everything which is related to football, whether it's here at Chapel Street or at the training ground at Melwood or at Kirkby. Having a daily involvement with Roy - we've been talking on a daily basis, sometimes having small meetings twice a day or three times a day - obviously working with the sports science team and the doctor, working with the video analysts, working with the academy, working with the scouts, that's the area I will cover.
So your role covers a wide basis then...Yes it is, because that's what football clubs are now. It's massive. You wake up in the morning and you get an email from a scout who has been somewhere in South America or someone else and he's sending you a report saying 'I really like this player'. It's definitely 24/7.
What are your objectives in the short term and then in the long term here at Liverpool?In the short term, in my position you always think of the next window or the next two windows and I think everybody has got this in mind. As I've just joined, we've got only a few weeks to prepare for the window but we are also looking at the summer transfer window. That's what I would call short term but then long term we are already looking at things like the pre-season tour for next season, we are already looking at the academy to see what we can improve, what the targets are there in England, young players who we could bring in, the same thing about Europe, to identify players around Europe that we'll be trying to bring in. It's a mix of short term and long term which I think is one of the beauties of this job.
How keen are you to work with and develop a relationship with Roy Hodgson?We already had a good relationship from my time at Spurs when he was coach at Finland or Fulham. We've been talking at length since I joined, several times a day on different issues and different matters, not only related to the transfer window or to scouting, we talk about everything. I think this relationship is going to grow in a positive way, that's for sure. We see things the same way. So far everything we have discussed we totally agree and have the same vision. I expect that's going to go on.
Is he a man you have a lot of respect for?Obviously. When you see the clubs he has managed and the national teams he has managed, what he's done at Fulham, what he's done at Blackburn and obviously being in charge here. In Switzerland maybe people don't realise how difficult it was when he was there, he changed the mentality of the people, tactically he brought new stuff in and I have got a lot of respect for him. Obviously, when you have managed Inter Milan as well and all the pressure there is there at one of the biggest clubs in the world, you have to have respect for what he's done.
Who will be in charge of buying and the recruitment of players?I think sometimes it becomes controversial and it should not be. As John Henry said, it will be a consensus among us. That's the way John sees it, that's the way I see it and that's the way Roy sees it. The manager's decision and the manager's opinion on a player is absolutely crucial. As far as I am concerned, and the way I have always worked in this job, is do not bring a player in who the manager doesn't like because there's no point. Talking in very basic terms, if you bring a player in who the manager doesn't like you are just wasting money, that's the bottom line. That's the way I have always been working and I expect with Roy it will be exactly the same thing.
Is there an ideal profile of the sort of players you are looking to bring into the club?I had a long conversation with Kenny Dalglish about that. I just wanted to know what it takes to be a Liverpool player. I said 'you have been a player here' and obviously he's been a fantastic manager, and I said 'what did you like when you were a player in the changing room to see in other players, what did you like when you were a manager, what's the tradition here, what does it need to be successful at Liverpool Football Club'? I was talking more from a personal character personality aspect of the players.
That's one thing, which is very important, but the other thing which is very important is what's good for the club in the future. Not doing a quick fix over six months. Can this player come here and improve us, help us to win things, to get into the Champions League in the next four or five years. That's the second aspect.
The third aspect which is also crucial is what does the manager want? What sort of player does he like? What type of organisation has he got on the pitch? Does he play 4-3-3, does he play 4-4-2, what type of full-back does he want etc? It's a mix of everything that I've just said, of those three points, but obviously the manager's opinion, coaching philosophy and playing philosophy is what we need to look at and it's up to me and all the staff working with me to say 'Roy, the way you like to play is that way, your philosophy is this one, we think this player fits perfectly into your philosophy'.
John Henry has already gone on record stating his desire to bring young players into the club - is that a philosophy you share?That's one of the reasons John and I decided to work together, because I think we share exactly the same view. John knew what I was going to do when I was at Spurs, it was the same at St Etienne and Arsenal before that. I believe strongly in this philosophy because I believe it is right for a football club. You can go down one route which is spending hundreds of millions of pounds or you can go down another route which says we have a strong identity, a strong philosophy, we know what we want to do, we know the club has history and we know how important the academy has been in the past, so it's definitely a key point in the fact that I joined the club. I believe what John told me and now I can see exactly what Liverpool Football Club is about.
There's clearly a lot of competition for those young players - every top club in Europe will be after them, so how do you intend to bring them here to Liverpool?First of all when you say every big club in Europe will be after young players, that's obvious, but we really want to concentrate on getting young English or British kids. I think that's very important if we want to keep an identity to get those kids into the football club. That's the first thing. Usually the big European clubs don't come into England to get players so there will be massive competition in England with all the other big clubs, and then if we need to go abroad or decide to bring in a young kid from a foreign country because we think he's a top talent then there will be competition with other clubs.
There are two things. You need to spot them, identify them, make sure they've got the right attitude, the right mentality, the right spirit that you want them around on a day to day basis. That's the thing. The second thing is convincing them to come. That requires a lot of time, it requires a skill set from the scouts, or from myself, or from Kenny because I'm sure Kenny can have a massive impact if he meets the kid or his parents. That's almost the most difficult part. Spotting a fantastic player is not that difficult, convincing them to come to us, that comes back to competition and that can be more difficult. We will have to be very, very good at it.
How much involvement will you have with the youth system here at Liverpool?The academy comes under my remit and I'm really looking forward to helping the guys continue to develop. I think for the last twelve or fifteen months they have worked very well, Frank McParland and Pep Segura. I had time to look at the coaching programmes and what they are trying to do. They are very eager, motivated, they want to develop players, they want to get the best for the club, they want to be one of the leading academies in Europe. I'm really there to help them, to help bring them best practise from my experience in other clubs, knowing what is done in Holland, knowing what is done in other clubs in England, knowing what is done in Spain, what is done in France, and then make sure the pool of talent we are going to choose from is good enough, is actually very good, because we want to bring those players into the first team at Liverpool.
There is perhaps a perception here in England that a Director of Football role perhaps doesn't work. What would your response to that be?Just a short one. Just look at what Frank Arnesen has done at Chelsea and the trophies they have won since he's been there. I think he's done a great job and I know, because I took over from him at Spurs when he went to Chelsea, that he did a very good job at Spurs and I tried to play my part there at the time. The fact that Tottenham are quite successful at the moment is just the work that's been done for the last six or seven years, but people were there structuring the club, bringing the right players etc. If you look at West Brom, they've also got a Director of Football who is working very well. They went down and then won promotion and are now in a terrific position in the league. I think it works no matter the country, to be honest with you. It's not so much the structure, it's the people that are in the structure, who are the structure, that are important and that they work together and I am one hundred per cent confident that the people who are in our structure, whether it's John Henry, Tom Werner, myself, Roy, Frank McParland at the academy, I'm sure we're going to work well together and bring success to the club.
There must be players you have worked with at previous clubs who have now gone on to enjoy big success which must give you confidence in your ability...you've obviously spotted and nurtured a lot of good players...First of all it's always the teamwork. It's not me going out and watching all the players. It's the scouts doing lots of work on the ground watching many, many games and finding that information about the player: good background, bad background, good family, not good family, good at school, not good at school etc. This is massive work which nobody ever talks about. The scouts deserve a lot of credit for doing that. Then obviously the manager deserves credit as well for two reasons. Firstly, because he trusted me at the time when I said we really should sign this player and secondly because on the pitch on a daily basis his coaching skills make the player become what he is. I'm maybe at the top of the organisation and everything is feeding back to me, and I might be in a position to make the final decision before the manager says yes, but it's really teamwork. No matter what I've done or players we have brought in, it's always been not about me but about the team around and the relationship with the manager.
In terms of recruitment, we've read that NESV are very keen on stats and looking at players based on certain statistics, is that a method you support?Massively. I strongly believe in it. What I hate is to be in a position where you have to make a decision on a player, but being blind. At the level we're at, with the amount of money we spend on players and wages etc, the more information you have the more data you can collect, the better it is. It's one thing to go and watch a player and say 'I like him', but if he's in the Championship or League One, can he make it in the Premier League? Can he make it in the Premier League at Liverpool which I don't think is the same as making it, with all due respect, to different clubs, lesser clubs? He's abroad so can he make it in the Premier League when he's a foreign player? That is one aspect, but the more information we can gather, the more information and data we collect which will help us make the right decision, the better it is. It doesn't mean we'll always get it right but it means we have to have the right processes in place to make sure we get it right. The Red Sox don't always get it right, but at least they've got processes that, if they go to them, they lower the risk massively. That's the principle of using the stat
How excited are you about the future at Liverpool?It's not about me, but I'm very excited about what the club could become in the future. I think John and Tom have got a fantastic vision about it. Roy sees it exactly the same way. I see it the same way. That's what excites me, where we can bring this club in the future.
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