With Damien Comolli, the Big Data revolution will sweep over the TFC

• Representative of the American investment fund RedBird Capital Partners, Damien Comolli (47) must take the reins of the TFC.
• In all his previous clubs, including Arsenal, Saint-Etienne, Tottenham and Liverpool, the native of Béziers relied on statistics to conduct his sports policy.
• Author of the book Football is an (in) exact science , Gautier Stangret deciphers the strategy of Comolli, whom he had met at length to write his work.

It is imminent. After 19 years of absolute power, the Sadran era is coming to an end in Toulouse. The club will go under the American flag, with the purchase of 85% of the shares of the current president by the investment fund RedBird Capital Partners. "Olivier Sadran explained to me that the TFC had no data on performance, on the players," said Mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc (LR) at 20 Minutes in early June. However, RedBird has this method which it intends to implement in Europe, starting with Toulouse. "

In preview, discover the summary of the work of @GautierStangret "#football is a science (in) exact" https://t.co/dQ6LEw4Xf3 pic.twitter.com/AwmsD2Vn31

For this, the Americans, involved among others in the New York Yankees (baseball) or the Dallas Cowboys (American football), can rely on their French representative Damien Comolli. The future president of Les Violets, in Ligue 2 or Ligue 1, is a pioneer of statistics - ubiquitous in US sport - applied to "soccer". To write his book Football is a science (in) exact (Amphora editions), released in late 2017, Gautier Stangret spent long hours with the native of Béziers, now 47 years old.

"He was a recruiter at Arsenal when Amisco [a company from Nice that analyzes match actions] started knocking on club doors in the early 2000s, explains the current audiovisual project manager at Infinity Nine Media, the production company by Tony Parker. He got interested and talked to his manager Arsène Wenger, a former math teacher. "

The "Moneyball" click

The other click at Comolli is of family origin: "His brother installed in the United States sent him the Moneyball book by Michael Lewis which was a revelation for him: we could therefore rationalize the sport rather than relying on opinions purely subjective ”, describes the former journalist. This 2003 work, adapted for cinema under the title Le Stratège  en VF retraces the epic of Billy Beane (aka Brad Pitt in the film). The general manager of the Oakland Athletics relied on a data-driven approach, called sabermetry, to make his baseball franchise more competitive, despite having a lower budget than his rivals.

Interesting itw from Comolli which reveals a little behind the scenes of how Liverpool has adapted its organization to integrate statistical data https://t.co/O6Qc1iZOku via @francefootball

"Damien Comolli may suffer from the image of an ayatollah of statistics, but people have no idea of ​​the work behind it, when we remember its failures more than its successes", underlines Gautier Stangret. Comolli would therefore not be a follower of the stat 'for the stat'. For example, rather than focusing on the overall possession of his team, he will refine his approach. "He will notably look at the number of successful passes in the opponent's 30 meters to recruit an attacking midfielder," says Stangret.

Matuidi's curves

According to the latter, the former sports director of Saint-Etienne changed the career of Blaise Matuidi in the late 2000s. "With the physical trainer, he pulled out his curves: Matuidi was one of the best players in Ligue 1 in terms of balls recovered, but it was average at the level of forward passes. In agreement with the trainer Christophe Galtier, he asked him to put more verticality in his game, to become a more box-to-box environment. After some trial and error, his changes paid off and the future world champion discovered the Blues in 2010.

Between his two visits to the Greens, Comolli worked as a general manager at Tottenham, where he set up a research and development cell. "He developed the statistics of the" expected goals ", which highlights the quality of the opportunities created by an attacker, to get Dimitar Berbatov in Leverkusen," continues Stangret.

The Berbatov example

Recruited for 15.7 million euros in Germany in 2006, the Bulgarian esthete will be a hit with the Spurs before spinning at Manchester United two years later, against 38 million. Comolli then broadened its approach to "expected assists" and even to "expected passes".

Okay, but the human in all this, will object to the nostalgics of a football before the VAR, sometimes irrational, where the fate of a match capsizes because of a square post or a German goalkeeper at uncontrolled exits? In football according to Comolli, artificial intelligence has not fully taken over, says Stangret. But the recruitment process is reversed: “Usually, a scout [recruiter] goes into the field to observe a player, then he is supported by the statistics. With Comolli, if a statistical model gives him information, he will send a scout to check it. "

#Datas in #Football: "At the beginning, I was treated of everything", says Biterrois Damien Comolli https://t.co/MVf2p8Qywx via @Midilibre

During an interview with Midi Libre last November, the Biterrois explained as follows: "I was convinced that there were deficiencies in the transfer market and that by using stats, we could see before to be able to make a recruit different people, find talent earlier, and don't fall for the overpay. "

But despite all the efforts to domesticate chance, football can keep a facetious side. In Liverpool, the French leader has certainly signed Luis Suarez, but also the flop Andy Carroll. There remains the case of midfielder Jordan Henderson, unearthed in 2011 in Sunderland for his stats of kilometers traveled and balls recovered: "Comolli estimates that he was fired from the Reds largely because of this recruitment [for 20 million euros ], notes Stangret. At first, Henderson was not efficient enough in terms of goals and assists. Ultimately, he became the captain who lifts the Champions League in 2019. "

| Former Liverpool football director Damien Comolli says recruiting Jordan Henderson cost him his job: "I remember the day I was sacked, the owners told me that signingJordan Henderson was a huge error pic.twitter.com/IqFGRHFL3x

Coming out of a failure with the Turks of Fenerbahçe, where he resigned from his post as sports director in January, Comolli is preparing to take the reins of a much more modest club.

"It will be interesting to see him at this level. He will seek out players with low market value which he will be able to develop in Toulouse. It can turn it into a laboratory for new technologies. When we spoke, he told me that if he took over a club in the middle or bottom of the table in L1, he could also use the game Football Manager and its great database to find good deals. "

Given the fiasco in the recruitment of TFC in recent seasons, it will probably not be too difficult to do better, with or without statistics.

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