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Of course, you are asking yourself now: Who is his gloating? You may think that he is the expected creative offensive player, who Liverpool will add to his list to throw another stone in the stagnant waters of central Liverpool since 2016-2017, but his gloating retired from football decades ago, unfortunately, and even when he was still playing, he was active in the last position that needed support. Currently in Liverpool; Goalkeeping.
To prevent disappointment, we will tell you that Liverpool are close to signing the already creative attacking player; By the time these lines are published Alexis McCallister will have completed his medical at Melwood and the club may have already announced his arrival. Ironically, Schmattke, the new sporting director who replaced Julian Ward after one year in charge, had no part in the deal. (1) (2) (3)
Bank guard
Perhaps Schmattke knew from the first moment that his career on and off the field would not be linked to the big names, whether they were players or clubs; His first match as a rookie goalkeeper for Fortuna Dusseldorf witnessed a humiliating 4-0 defeat by Bayern Munich, as if football was warning him of irrational ambitions from the start. (4)
The ninth of September 1985 was not the best start for the young goalkeeper in the Bundesliga, but after 266 matches in the first division and 109 others in the second, their best moments were finishing in third place twice, Jorg decided to retire in 1998, and immediately after that he took over as assistant coach to Rainer Bonhoff In Gladbach, then – like most of those who follow this path after retirement – returned to the club of his beginnings, Fortuna Dusseldorf, as a goalkeeper coach on a short-term contract. (4)
This was in 2001, and then a few months later, the Allemania Aachen club came, asking for Schmattke’s hand. the reason? They were going through a severe financial crisis in the second division, and that crisis almost took away their license as a professional club. Why did they come to gloat specifically? nobody knows. A former goalkeeper who has not passed two years in technical positions, what does he know about managing clubs financially and mathematically?
As it turned out, his schadenfreude knew a lot. Nobody knows how that knowledge came to him either, but just 4 years later, Alemania Aachen was setting a record as the only club in history to qualify for the UEFA Cup while still in the second tier. This was the result of his reaching the final match in the German Cup, which he narrowly lost to Werder Bremen with two goals to three, of course, before he was promoted to the first division and then relegated at the end of the same season. (5)
Achen fell and did not return except on a few occasions, but on the contrary, the star of Schmattke rose as a sports director in the first administrative position he ever held in his life, and he did not fall again except on a few occasions in turn. (4)
To Hanover and beyond
Schmatke left Aachen in 2008, and spent 4 years in Hanover, leading them to finish the 2009-2010 season in the top four, and once again participating in the European League, the newly created version of the European Union Cup at the time, but that experience, despite its magnificence, did not end in the best way. A possible way, as Schmatt was involved in the biggest embarrassment his career would witness until the present moment, when he contracted with the Brazilian axis player Franca, claiming that his physical structure, specifically his height of 190 cm, were the most important motives for contracting with him. (6)
Franca arrived from Brazil, and it turned out that he was nine centimeters shorter than he gloated, and that was the end of his good relationship with coach Mirko Slomka.
“What can I say? I was surprised! The most important criterion I asked attention to in the transaction was size and length!”
(Mirko Slomka, technical director of Hanover, in a statement to German Bild in 2013) (6)
An embarrassment of this magnitude raised many doubts about the man’s abilities, but all those doubts disappeared completely after the man repeated the same experiment in Colin; Once appointed in 2013, he led them back to the Bundesliga, then qualified for the European League in 2017, and during that period, he achieved his greatest success in the market ever, when he brought French Anthony Modest from Hoffenheim for the equivalent of 4.5 million euros, and after his glow, he loaned him to the Chinese club Tianjin Quanjian for a fee. 6 million euros, then sold it for an additional 29 million to his compatriot Tianjin Tianhai as the most expensive sale in Colin’s history. (7)
Even after the gloating was gone, Modeste’s earnings continued to flow; As he recovered it from China for free, then loaned it again for the equivalent of 5 million euros, bringing the total that the club won from the French deal to approximately 36 million euros. to measure; This is equivalent to what the club has spent on its total signings in the last 6 seasons.
Here Wolfsburg decided to bet on his gloating, but with a larger budget that might allow him to accomplish more. Or so it was believed.
“In his early years, Schmattke did not have money, and his main weapon was creativity, imagination and intelligence, but as soon as the money was available, things did not go well!”
(Philip Selldorf, Gulen editor for the Suddeutsche Zeitung)
Of course, you did not expect the story to go in one direction from beginning to end; Selldorf recalls 2017 – just before his departure to Wolfsburg – as the worst year of Schmattke’s sports management career ever.
In the summer of 2017, Schmattke completed his most expensive deal to date, including Colombian striker John Cordoba for 17 million euros. In clubs like Cologne, this is a fantastic number to spend on one player. The important thing is that after 10 matches, Cordoba had not scored a single goal, and the voices were loud, confirming Selldorf’s theory itself about the man who was lost by the largest budgets of his exceptional touch. (6)
That deal, like Franca’s deal, was the end of his gloating with Colin, and paradoxically, after which Cordoba scored 37 goals in 86 games – a very good rate for a striker at this price – for Colin before moving to Hertha Berlin for 15 million euros.
In Cologne, there was another 7 million wasted on Jan Horn, whom Schmattke brought from Wolfsburg ironically, and not only failed to justify his price, but the club itself failed to recover any of those 7 million after he left for free at the end of his contract.
Brotherhood of the “Dead Pants”
“I want to see a little bit of the world. There are some books I want to read too, and some other tasks I want to do that have nothing to do with football.” (7)
This was what Schmatke told the same newspaper – Sueddeutsche Zeitung – after his departure from Wolfsburg last February. During that period, the man succeeded in completing contracts such as Lucas and Felix Nemecha from the Manchester City Academy, the two brothers who turned into international players with the Manshafts, and the promising Danish Jonas Wind, to be added to a series of illustrious names that he directed to the Bundesliga through his career, such as Lars Stindel and Vidad. Ibisevic, Anthony Modest and others, but as usual, there was only one mistake that could raise doubts again about the man’s work, and this mistake was named Victor Osimhen.
It was Schmatke who sent the Nigerian on loan to Belgian Charleroi as soon as he arrived in Wolfsburg in 2018, then sold it easily for 3.5 million euros, and four seasons later in which Osimhen rose like a missile on the European scene, it was 26 goals with Napoli, a historic title for the Scudetto, and the Serie A top scorer award. , reminding everyone of the disaster that occurred five seasons ago.
Nevertheless, he never suffered from his gloating at the functional level. In fact, perhaps the greatest irony of the man’s career ever is that since his departure from Wolfsburg, Bayern Munich, who tore his net four times in his first ever professional match, has been negotiating with him to replace Hasan Salihamidzic, the newly dismissed sports director, but his friendship with Klopp and admiration The mutual permanent duo with each other, was what decided his move to Liverpool. (8) (9)
His gloating is not a follower, he is not a “Yes Man” as the English expression says, he is not subject to administrative hierarchy easily, and he has a long history in dealing with limited budgets, and this is the type of personalities that Klopp prefers to work with, in addition to another very important detail that we believe is its role in the deal. was not insignificant; The duo is in love with (4) the German rock band “Dead Pants” (Die Toten Hosen).
Of course, this is its name in a literal translation, and despite its strangeness, it seems logical for a truly German rock band. The important thing is that work began in the current Liverpool transfer market quickly as soon as the man arrived, after it seemed as if watching the world and reading books did not take more than two months, after which the man felt the need to return to the waters of football again.
The most important news came quickly after Christian Valcke, chief editor of German Bild, announced that Liverpool had become the closest club in Europe to Gladbach’s young talent, Manu Kone; The Frenchman, who was considered by Liverpool as an alternative option to Jude Bellingham, and the reason for this was not related to Schmattke’s previous competence, but was related to the fact that his son, Nils Schmattke, had assumed the position of sports director in Gladbach a few days ago in turn. (10)
This Move could make the Transfer of Manu Koné (@borussia Mönchengladbach) for Liverpool easier: Nils Schmadtke is working for the Sportdirector of Mönchengladbach now. Nils is the son of Jörg Schmadtke, new sportdirector of Liverpool
— Christian Falk (@cfbayern) June 3, 2023
Will the man succeed in bringing Liverpool back into competition after a disastrous season by all accounts? His bewildering career may not give us a clear answer. Perhaps people exaggerated the size of his mistakes, as if they were used to miracles and no longer understood the fact that all those deals took place in very difficult financial and negotiating circumstances, and that what his gloating turned into a rule was supposed to be the exception. (1112)
What is really disturbing is that his gloating may be the beginning of Liverpool’s return to competition in his usual smart style and the enormous experience he gathered from working with very small budgets, and it may be an indication of the intention of the “Fenway Sports Group” that owns Liverpool to gradually withdraw from the actual competition for the title, and suffice with a struggle Qualifying for the Champions League, contrary to official pronouncements, awaits a new buyer with the hopes and frustrations of an era that was hoped to achieve more than it has already achieved. (13)
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