Of course, you are asking yourself now: who is gloating? You might think he's the creative attacking player in waiting, who Liverpool will add to their squad to throw another stone into Liverpool's midfield waters that have been stagnant since 2016-2017, but Schmatke retired from football decades ago unfortunately, and even while still playing, he was active in the last position that needs to be strengthened at Liverpool now, goalkeeping.
To avoid disappointment, we'll tell you that Liverpool are on the verge of signing the creative attacking player already; by the time you publish these lines Alexis McAllister will have completed medical tests at Melwood, and the club may have already announced his arrival, and ironically, Schmåtke, the new sporting director who replaced Julian Ward after one year in the role, had no role in the deal. (1) (2) (3)
Bank Guard
Schmatke probably knew from the first moment that his career on and off the pitch would not be tied to big names, whether players or clubs; his first match as a rising goalkeeper for Fortuna Dusseldorf saw a terrible quadruple clean defeat to Bayern Munich, as if football were warning him of irrational ambitions from the start. (4)
The ninth of September 1985 was not the young goalkeeper's best start in the Bundesliga, but after 266 games in the first division and another 109 in the second, their best moments were finishing in third place twice, Jörg decided to retire in 1998, immediately followed by taking over as assistant coach to Rainer Bonhoff in Gladbach, and then returned - like most of those who take this path after retirement - to his starting club, Fortuna Düsseldorf, as goalkeeping coach on a short-term contract. (4)
It was in 2001, and it wasn't a few months later that Alimanja Aachen came to ask for the hand of Schamatke. Reason? They were going through a financial crisis in the second division, and that crisis was about to topple their license as a professional club. Why did they come to gloat him specifically? No one knows. A former goalkeeper who has not spent two years in technical positions, what does he know about managing clubs athletically and financially?
Jörg Schmatke (Getty Images)
What turned out was that Schmatke knew a lot. No one knows how he had that knowledge either, but just 4 years later, Alimania Aachen was setting a record as the only club in history to have qualified for the UEFA Cup while still in the second division. This was the result of reaching the final of the German Cup, which they narrowly lost to Werder Bremen by two goals to three, of course, before being promoted to the top flight and then relegated at the end of the same season. (5)
Aachen was relegated and returned only on a few occasions, but on the contrary, Najm Schmatke rose as sporting director in the first managerial job he ever held, and only landed again on a few occasions in turn. (4)
To Hanover and beyond
Schmatke left Aachen in 2008, and spent 4 years in Hannover, where he led them to finish the 2009-2010 season in the top four, and again, participating in the Europa League, the new version of the UEFA Cup at the time, but that experience, despite its magnificence, did not end in the best possible way, as Schmatke was involved in the biggest embarrassment that his career will witness until the present moment, when he signed the Brazilian pivot player Franca, claiming that his physique, specifically his height of 190 cm, were the most important motives for signing him. (6)
Hannover manager Jörg Schmatke shouts next to the assistant referee during the Bundesliga match between Hannover 96 and Bayer Leverkusen on 11 September 2010. (Getty Images)
Franca arrived from Brazil, and it turned out to be about nine centimeters shorter than Schmatze thought, and that was the end of his good relationship with manager Mirko Salomka.
"What can I say? I was surprised! The most important criterion I asked to pay attention to in the deal was size and length!"
(Hannover coach Mirko Salomka 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 were completely removed after the man repeated the same experience in Cologne; once appointed in 2013, he led them back to the Bundesliga, then qualify for the Europa League in 2017, and during that period, he achieved his greatest success in the market ever, when he brought in Frenchman Anthony Modst from Hoffenheim for the equivalent of 4.5 million euros, and after his glow, he loaned him to the Chinese club Tianjin Quangin for 6 million euros, and then sold him for an additional 29 million. to his compatriot Tianjin Tianhai as the most expensive sale in the history of Gulen. (7)
Anthony Modst of German club Köln (Getty Images)
Modst's profits continued to flow even after Schmatke left, bringing him back from China for nothing, then loaning him back for the equivalent of €5 million, bringing the club's total profit from the Frenchman's deal to almost €36 million. For measurement, 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 at least so was the belief.
"In his early years, Schmatke didn't have the money, and his main weapon was creativity, imagination and intelligence, but once the money was available, things didn't go well!"
(Philipp Seldorf, Gülen editor for the Suddeutsche Zeitung)
Of course, you didn't expect the story to go in one direction from start to finish; Seldorf mentions 2017 – just before his departure to Wolfsburg – as Schmatzke's worst year in sports management ever.
In the summer of 2017, Schmatke completed his most expensive deal to date by signing Colombian striker John Córdoba for €17 million. At clubs like Köln this is a fantasy figure to spend on a single player. What is important is that after 10 games Cordoba had not scored a single goal, and voices were raising the same theory of the man whose extraordinary touch was lost by larger budgets. (6)
John Cordoba playing for FC Köln at the time during the 2020 Bundesliga match (Getty Images)
That deal, like that of Franca, was the end of his gloating with Köln, and ironically, Cordoba then scored 37 goals in 86 games – a very good rate for a striker of this price – for Köln before moving to Hertha Berlin for €15 million.
At Cologne, there was another $7 million wasted on Jan Horn, who was ironically brought in by Schmatke from Wolfsburg, and not only failed to justify his price, but the club itself failed to recover any of those seven million after leaving for free at the end of his contract.
Fraternity "Dead Pants"
"I want to see a little bit of the world. There are some books that I would like to read as well, and some other tasks that I want to accomplish that have nothing to do with football." (7)
This was what Schmatke told the same newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, after leaving Wolfsburg in February. In that period, the man succeeded in completing the signings of Lucas and Felix Nemisha from the Manchester City academy, the brothers who turned international players with the Manchaft, and the promising Danish Jonas Wind, to add to a series of illustrious names that he directed for the Bundesliga throughout his career, such as Lars Stendel, Vidad Ibisevic, Anthony Modst and others, but as usual, it was one mistake that would raise doubts again about the man's work, and this mistake was named Victor Osiman.
It was Schmatke who sent the Nigerian on loan to Charleroi as soon as he arrived at Wolfsburg in 2018, then easily sold him for 3.5 million euros, and four seasons later in which Osimin rose like a rocket on the European stage, he had 26 goals with Napoli, a historic Scudetto title, and Serie A top scorer award, reminding everyone of the disaster that occurred five seasons ago.
Schmatke's friendship (right) with Klopp, and the duo's constant mutual admiration for each other, was what sealed his move to Liverpool. (Getty Images)
Yet he never suffered from his gloating at the career level. Indeed, perhaps the biggest irony of the man's career is that since his departure from Wolfsburg, Bayern Munich, who tore a quadruple in their first-ever professional game, have been negotiating to replace newly sacked sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic, but it was his friendship with Klopp, and the duo's ever-lasting mutual admiration for each other, that sealed his move to Liverpool. (8) (9)
Schmatke is not a follower, not "Yes Man" as the English expression says, is not easily subject to administrative hierarchy, and has a long history of dealing with limited budgets, and this is the type of characters that Klopp prefers to work with, in addition to another very important detail that we believe that her role in the deal was not insignificant; the duo adore (4) the German rock band called "Die Toten Hosen".
Of course, that's her literal name, and despite its strangeness, it really makes sense to a German rock band. The important thing is that work in Liverpool's current transfer market began quickly as soon as the man arrived, after it seemed as if it took only two months to see the world and read books, after which the man felt the need to return to the waters of football again.
The most important news came quickly after Christian Valcke, senior editor of German Bild, announced that Liverpool had become the closest club in Europe to Gladbach's young talent Manu Koné, the Frenchman whom Liverpool considered an alternative option to Jude Bellingham, and the reason for this was not related to the competence of Schmatke's previous competence, but was related to the fact that his son, Niels Schmatke, took over as sporting director at Gladbach days ago as well. (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 contention after a disastrous season by all accounts? Perhaps people exaggerated the magnitude of his mistakes, as if they were accustomed to miracles and no longer understood the fact that all these deals were made in very difficult financial and negotiating conditions, and that what his gloating turned into a rule was supposed to be the exception. (11) (12)
What is really worrying is that Schamatke may be the beginning of Liverpool's return to competition with its usual smart style and enormous experience that it has 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 settle for the struggle to qualify for the Champions League, contrary to official statements, waiting for a new buyer who carries the hopes and frustrations of an era that was hoped to achieve more than it has already achieved. (13)
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Sources:
- 1. Arranging Alexis McAllister's medical examination at Liverpool – The Athletic
- 2- Why is Liverpool signing McAllister and what will he add to Jurgen Klopp's team? – The Athletic
- 3- Liverpool appoint Jörg Schmatke as their new sporting director – BBC
- 4- Who is Jörg Schmatke? Everything you need to know about the former sporting director of Wolfsburg, Hannover and Köln – Bundesliga
- 5. Jörg Schmatke, Liverpool's new sporting director nicknamed "The Annoying Grumbler" – The Athletic
- 6. Evaluation of Liverpool's new sporting director Jörg Schmatke and his successes and failures in the transfer market – The Athletic
- 7- The right man to rebuild Liverpool? Meet new sporting director Jörg Schmatke – Goal
- 8- Who is Jörg Schmätke? Liverpool's strange new candidate for sporting director – This is Anfield
- 9 - Liverpool appoint Jörg Schmatke as sporting director to manage summer transfers – The Guardian
- 10- ليفربول يحصل على دفعة مزدوجة غير متوقعة في سباق التوقيع مع الثنائي الذي سيكلفه 62 مليون جنيه إسترليني – Liverpool FC
- 11- مَن هو يورغ شماتكه مدير ليفربول الرياضي الجديد؟ – Football Transfers
- 12- يورغ شماتكه لا يصادق المدربين ولكن سيرته الذاتية تُظهر خبراته! – Talk Sport
- 13- مالك مجموعة فنواي: "ليفربول ليس للبيع!" – The Guardian