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Liverpool Echo

Sport

Dave Powell

Damien Comolli rebirth after FSG sacking has strong Liverpool links

Damien Comolli FSG Toulouse (Organization) RedBird Football Fenerbahce Gerry Cardinale Jordan Henderson RedBird Capital Partners United States

It's a little over a decade since Damien Comolli and Liverpool parted ways.

Comolli had been one of the first major hires of the Fenway Sports Group regime at Anfield in 2010, installed in the role of director of football to shape the recruitment strategy at the club and implement the kind of team building that FSG, then known as New England Sports Ventures, desired.

But less than two years on from arriving on Merseyside from Tottenham Hotspur, Comolli and Liverpool parted ways by 'mutual consent', the Frenchman shown the door after being blamed for a number of transfer failings including Andy Carroll and, rather surprisingly in hindsight, Jordan Henderson.

Henderson was cited by Comolli in a 2016 interview as being one of the main reasons that FSG decided to look in a new direction, with the £20m 2011 signing from Sunderland making a slow start to his Reds career before he would go on to etch his name into Anfield folklore.

The Comolli impact remained at Liverpool beyond his departure, though. Michael Edwards, the lauded sporting director who has been credited with playing a huge part in the Reds' successes over recent years through his recruitment strategy, may have departed the club last month for pastures new. But it was Comolli that brought him to Merseyside as an analyst from Spurs shortly after he took on the director of football role.

But Comolli and FSG have mutual links once again. In the summer of 2020 he was appointed as chairman of then French second-tier side Toulouse following their takeover by US private investment fund RedBird Capital Partners. Less than 12 months on from his arrival at Toulouse, RedBird, who are now also owners of Italian giants AC Milan, would clinch at 11 per cent stake in FSG in a $750m deal.

Toulouse won the Ligue 2 title last season and return to Ligue 1 just two years on from when RedBird took over following their relegation from French football's top tier. The new ownership has brought about a culture change and there are serious ambitions for further growth, albeit ambition that will be tempered by business reality as they seek to create a successful yet sustainable football team, something that RedBird and FSG sing from the same hymn sheet on.

Comolli has opened up on his relationship with RedBird, a firm so closely entwined with FSG and Liverpool through its investment, and has revealed how the working relationship came to be. Speaking to the Training Ground Guru podcast, Comolli said: "For many years there was one and we had been friends for many, many years. He kept saying, 'we need to work together and we need to buy a club'.

"I signed for Fenerbahce in June 2018 and in December 2018 they called me and said, 'I've partnered with Gerry Cardinale and Alec Scheiner at RedBird, they are great guys and we are going to buy a club in the Premier League and we want you to run our club'.

"I didn't want to leave Fenerbahce at the time, I had just got there and the club was in trouble and I didn't have a good feeling about leaving. In the end a deal didn't go through to buy a Premier League club but we stayed in touch and they use to call me on a monthly basis.

"When I left Fenerbahce (in January 2020) they rang me and asked to talk to me, so I flew to London to talk to them. We visited a few clubs in England that they were looking at to buy and then asked to meet and chat more. We met again and agreed to work together. There was no Toulouse at the time or any focus on one club, we just said that we would work together.

"RedBird had analysed 70 clubs and visited 50 over three years. One of them was Toulouse. Gerry Cardinale, the managing partner, and Alec Scheiner, who is in charge of the sporting side, defined four criteria to pick a club.

"One was to be in a very dynamic city, both economically and demographically, and Toulouse is the third youngest city in Europe. They also wanted a club with a good stadium, a good Academy and a local partner that was reliable and that they could work with. Toulouse fits exactly the four criteria that were defined - and it was for sale with no debt.

"We have a CEO, Olivier Jaubert, who does all of the commercial and business aspect, and I am the chairman and also run the football side with a strategy committee - our head of strategy (Selinay Gurgenc), head of data (Julien Demeaux) and head of recruitment (former Brentford head of recruitment Brendan MacFarlane) - and we make most of the decisions together, along with the owners when it comes to the big decisions."

Toulouse is owned by RedBird FC, a separate entity to RedBird Capital Partners through which the investment in FSG and, ergo, Liverpool arrived. RedBird have been active in the adding sporting teams and businesses to their portfolio over the past two years, most recently with the £1bn acquisition of AC Milan in June. The fund has a stake in Indian Premier League cricket team Rajasthan Royals as well as a significant investment in Zelus Analytics, a sports data business founded by Luke Bornn, a former AS Roma head of analytics who was an early adopter of the idea that Mohamed Salah was playing well beneath his true potential.

Now, Zelus and Bornn are aiding the Toulouse effort under RedBird and Comolli, an effort that will carry even more importance as the club seeks to re-establish itself in French football's top flight.

Comolli said: "Alec Scheiner was over recently and said, 'you guys have built an incredible culture at the club in a very short period of time'. I said, 'we are at the same time extremely data-driven'. He said, 'then you have the perfect balance'.

"I think both can work easily together. Part of our culture is the use of data, we don’t hide from it. Data defines our playing style and our playing style defines our culture. It’s a full circle and it works.

"Luke (Bornn) created Zelus Analytics with his business partner and RedBird Capital Partners purchased 50 per cent of the company, so they are within the family of RedBird. We buy raw data from three different providers and have our own algorithm and website where we can analyse players.

"I think Zelus have eight or nine analysts based in the US, PhDs, who work only on Toulouse. Then we have a head of data here who links with Zelus and the rest of us at the club. They talk on a weekly basis, so it’s very easy. They look at projects, too. At the moment we are working, with data, on how do we improve our throw ins. Data helped us to define our strategy on set plays.

"We also use data to analyse our own players, the opposition, identifying the head coach, contract management and recruitment. If we see a player who is a great opportunity we will go for him almost regardless. The starting point, the model, is massively focused on offence, so we give a lot more weight to offence.

"The model helps us fine tune our playing style and be even more precise in what we want to achieve. Last season we scored 35 per cent of our goals on set plays, which is very high.

"Our head of strategy and head of data have spent many hours since September 2021 thinking how we need to prepare if we go up. We use data a lot on optimising our resources in terms of transfer fees and wage bill.

"Next season we are probably going to be the 15th/ 16th wage bill out of 20 teams in Ligue 1 and there will be four relegations. We say we can lose, but not because we aren’t prepared."

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