Following the TFC press release on May 21 concerning an exclusive negotiation agreement with the RedBird Capital Partners group, Damien Comolli is slated to represent American society and become club president in place ofOlivier Sadran. Before becoming the general manager of Tottenham, the sports director of Liverpool and Fenerbahçe, the Biterrois had the opportunity to make two trips to Saint-Etienne.
Paul, member of the site En Vert Et Contre Tous, was able to give us his feelings concerning the passage of the future president of the TFC in his club.
How did Damien Comolli’s passages in Saint-Etienne go?
“Damien Comolli was recruited by ASSE in 2004 while the club was in the process of reaching the first division with the duo Frédéric Antonetti in sports and Christian Villanova in management. At the end of the season, the Greens are champions and climb into D1. Against all expectations, Damien Comolli is preferred to Omar Da Fonseca and integrates the club’s recruitment unit and it is Elie Baup who is chosen to continue the adventure and suddenly the staff who had been put in place by the duo Antonetti- Villanova was quickly replaced. Damien Comolli will only stay 5-6 months in Saint-Etienne and did not necessarily make an impression at first. Little time was left for him to put things in place.
He returned in November 2008 when the club was not doing very well in sport and was experiencing one of his first sports crises to occupy a position of sports director in association with Vincent Tong-Cuong, a duo inducted by the management of the time. to manage the sportsman. He took care of recruiting the 2009-2010 team, a transfer window that did not have very resounding names, even players who broke their teeth at that time (Boubacar Sanogo, Gonzalo Bergessio, Bakary Sako, Gelson Fernandes, etc.). However, when he arrived with us, he had a rather good CV since he was a recruiter at Arsenal, largely responsible for the recruitment of the Frenchies, the spiritual son of Wenger disappointed a little. On his second visit there remains a season and a half, a full season from 2008 to 2009 and from November 2009 he is sidelined following the sports crisis experienced by the Greens. He was then held responsible for the poor results and held a “fictitious” post in the presidency and after 6 months, a proposal fell from England to join Liverpool. I do not remember that Comolli had real relationships with the supporters. Initially, he was in charge of recruitment at ASSE, so not really in media activity.”
Have projects been set up during his visit?
“Not really, the good sports results on which the team surfed had been made by the recruitment of the previous year (Blaise Matuidi, Dimitri Payet, etc.) who knew how to carry the team for a few seasons. The renewal of the team was done with another team, namely that of Christophe Galtier, and Comolli was absolutely not involved in its creation. He is a leader who was ultimately very little present in Saint-Etienne with two short terms, the first time he did not have full power over his actions and the second time the sporting situation to push the management to quickly change trajectory.”
How do you see the TFC evolving under his presidency?
“When we look at Comolli’s CV, we can see him as the little prince of football leaders, with a relatively young profile, who despite everything, where he went, has had rather good results, now when we take the example of Saint-Etienne, he did not leave a good memory of him. He would be a young president with real international experience and at the highest level. He has a very developed network and can bring a real plus, but it would have been much more useful in Ligue 1 than in Ligue 2. In a club on the scale of Toulouse, I am not sure that this experience will serve him to properly speaking. Will he locally be able to adapt? It’s complicated to answer that question. Does he have the right profile to raise the TFC in the elite? Yes and no, it is above all the structure of the TFC which has the profile to go back to Ligue 1, even if we know that the League 2 championship is complicated and that it is rare to go back in a single season. Everything will depend on the means he has at his disposal.”
To conclude…
“Overall, he did not really mark ASSE, was not very present in the media and relations were very tense at the end between him and the Stéphanois staff. Bernard Caïazzo, president at the time, had set fire to Damien Comolli following his departure, saying that he was taking it easy and that nothing was planned in terms of recruitment, that the organization lived day by day and that he was responsible for the stagnation of the club: ” Damien spent 22 million euros for 7 players last summer, only one is part of the regular team now, his departure will not prevent me from sleeping, Damien did not play the game, there was no recruitment in progress, we gave him the keys to the club and we are now in financial difficulty trying to free the players, you need humility in football and Damien was 100% convinced to be right. There was never any question of dialogue, he had total power during his first year, he had the last word on transfers, Alain Perrin (coach of the Greens at the time) did not even see some of the players that ‘they were given to him, Damien was his leader. I would have liked to fire him, but the co-president defended him for months. It was a mistake to bring it back to the club, we have no money to throw out the window and the players we had lost 30% of their value. “I can therefore confirm that Comolli did not leave a very good memory in Saint-Etienne, whether it was on the side of the management or the supporters.”