Damien Comolli is never knowingly undersold ÔÇô just ask Ars?¿ne Wenger
The Frenchman's departure from Liverpool will not surprise those, like the Arsenal manager, not charmed by his chutzpah
During Damien Comolli's three years at Tottenham Hotspur the club signed Gareth Bale and Luka Modric but Liverpool's recent signings were not so successful. Photograph: Nigel French/Empics Sport
To the staff who saw it at
Tottenham Hotspur the CV that
Damien Comolli attached to his job application form in 2005 was the subject of considerable mirth ÔÇô and incredulity. The Frenchman swept into White Hart Lane as replacement for the outgoing sporting director, Frank Arnesen, on the back of a body of work that had supposedly helped to make
Ars?¿ne Wenger the success story he became at
Arsenal.
If Wenger would be indebted to players such as Thierry Henry and Robert Pires, then the manager's affection for Comolli, the club's European talent scout from 1996-2003, for ushering the legendary France internationals Wenger's way, together with a glut of other stars, would surely know no bounds.
"I let you write what you want about Comolli," Wenger said in November 2010, with scarcely concealed disgust. "He was a scout here and not a director of football. He worked under Steve Rowley [the chief scout]. That is it. Only one person decides who comes in here and that is me. Nobody else."
Comolli is never knowingly undersold, although his detractors at Tottenham, St Etienne and
Liverpool,
from whom he has now parted, would take issue with that on a less figurative level. It is his chutzpah, his ability to sell himself, that has helped propel him to positions of influence in English football. But as he digested his departure from the post of director of football strategy at Anfield, it was possible to see this attribute as having come before a fall ÔÇô again.
The reaction to the news that Comolli would have to polish that CV and ping it around the market once more was polarised. The 39-year-old is a suave, multilingual university graduate, one of those guys who creates a good first impression and, of course, interviews well. He is fundamentally nice, a football-lover and someone with a ferocious dedication to his job.
Kenny Dalglish, the Liverpool manager, may not have seen eye-to-eye with him but he could never fault his work ethic. Comolli puts the hours in, regularly spending 12 or 13 in his office, studying matches and DVDs of players. It takes a toll on family life; how can it not? Herein lay the basis for his assertion that he was returning to France for "family reasons".
Comolli's friends lamented his failure to succeed at Anfield and they knew it was not for the want of trying. They wondered whether he had been cast as the spacegoat for the collective shortcomings of Dalglish, the technical staff and the squad.
Some of Comolli's friends have been made in high places, with Billy Beane, of Moneyball fame and a confidant of Liverpool's principal owner John W Henry, one. Comolli met Beane at a sports industry conference; Beane was impressed and, when the Fenway Sports Group took over at Anfield, he introduced Comolli to Henry. Comolli is adept at working a room, which is pretty important in his vocation. As an aside, Beane's "true hero", according to Arsenal's majority shareholder Stan Kroenke, is Wenger.
Comolli, though, has accumulated enemies or at least football people who have nothing good to say about him. They were shedding no tears over his demise at Liverpool. If he is treated with scorn by Wenger and others at Arsenal, then the same became true at Tottenham, where sources say the only discovery he made was the defender Beno?«t Assou-Ekotto.
Comolli likes to point out that on his three-year watch Tottenham signed success stories such as Dimitar Berbatov, Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Heurelho Gomes, not to mention Assou-Ekotto, although there were plenty of misses, too. His claim, however, that it was he who conceived the capture of Berbatov was one of a number to go down badly. Arnesen had done the legwork on that deal. At Arsenal only Ga?½l Clichy was a Comolli recommendation.
Martin Jol, who was the Tottenham manager when Comolli arrived, clashed with him over signings and Harry Redknapp told the chairman, Daniel Levy, that he would not come to Tottenham in October 2008 if he had to work under a sporting director. The manager caught the mood at the club over Comolli. "Yeah, he should take all the credit, for sure," Redknapp has said, sarcastically.
Technical directors have not thrived in English football, where experienced managers such as Wenger, Dalglish and Redknapp demand control over team affairs. The curiosity, as Comolli may reflect post-Liverpool, is what happens when signings fail to justify the outlay and expectations.
