Damien Comolli, the president of Toulouse, was one of the first people hired by Fenway Sports Group, and he spent eighteen months at Liverpool.
He is the one who, in the narrative of Liverpool’s metamorphosis under Fenway Sports Group, has been all but forgotten. However, his impact persisted even after his sudden and unexpected departure.
Thursday night’s match between Jurgen Klopp’s squad and Toulouse, a French Ligue Un team of which he is president, will bring Damien Comolli back to Anfield when the two top teams in Group E of the Europa League square off.
Less than a month after the Americans took over as owners from Tom Hicks and George Gillett, Comolli became one of the first significant hires made by FSG, which was then known as New England Sports Ventures. He held the position of director of football strategy.
The duties assigned to the Frenchman, who had previously worked for Saint-Etienne, Monaco, Arsenal, and Tottenham Hotspur
After Fernando Torres left the team on January 14, 2011, Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez were hired on the same day, and two months later, Comolli was named the team’s first director of football. The following summer, Jordan Henderson was joined by Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing, Jose Enrique, Sebastian Coates, Craig Bellamy, and Doni.
The following season, Liverpool won the League Cup, but six weeks later, in April 2012, with the Reds severely underperforming in the Premier League and several of his recruits failing to make an impression, Comolli was fired. He later stated that FSG president John Henry had acknowledged that Comolli’s dismissal was an error in judgment.
“I could see they would be absolutely ruthless if they didn’t feel comfortable with something and they were ruthless with me at the time,”
After they fired me, John Henry visited the club a week later to conduct a review. I later learned from a former employee that at a meeting, he had said, “Oh my God, we fired the wrong person.”
Even if Comolli didn’t have the best strike rate, Suarez was a major success, and Henderson went on to lead Liverpool to multiple titles under Klopp, including the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Super Cup, and the first Club World Cup for the team.
The impact of Michael Edwards, whom Comolli hired as head of analytics in November 2011 after he was fired by Tottenham Hotspur, was also crucial to that trophy-winning engine. Before taking on the role of sporting director in November, Edwards was first elevated to the position of director of technical performance and then technical director.
In an exclusive 2020 interview with The Ornstein & Chapman Podcast, Comolli stated, “The most difficult thing with data is to make sense of it, then transmit it to the coaches or players in a way that will be useful to them.” “When I asked around the field who the best player was, one of them mentioned Michael Edwards of Tottenham.
“Everyone believes that I collaborated with Michael while I was at Tottenham, but that is untrue. After we had a few meetings and I informed him about the role I intended to create, he accepted the job.
He is an extremely intelligent man. Although we weren’t working there for a while, when I left I
We call was eventually made by FSG. The rest, as they say, is history, which would not have occurred if Comolli hadn’t had such an impact during his 18 months at Anfield.
