Is Damien Comolli the man to bring "Moneyball" to the Premier League?

The name Damien Comolli is probably not one that’s immediately recognizable to most fans; the names of specific backroom staffmembers aren’t usually paraded about in the same way that the names of footballers’ mistresses are. For Spurs fans, however, Damien Comolli is a name that should ring bells: as the director of football at Tottenham from 2005-08, he was a central figure in the recruitment of the talent that’s presently winning big games in the Champions League.

Comolli was exiled after Juande Ramos was sacked in 2008 (famously earning Tottenham only two points in three months); now, after serving a second stint as Saint-Ettiene’s sporting director, Comolli is set to return to England, where he looks set to utilize his skill at spotting youth talent for Liverpool.

This isn’t a story that’s wholly about Liverpool, though; it’s also about Tottenham, the San Jose Earthquakes, and Billy Beane. Let’s talk about it after the jump.

For about two years, I’ve been trying to write a piece on the utilization of sabermetrics in soccer; unfortunately, this isn’t an area where there’s a lot of information out in the open. Firstly, soccer isn’t baseball; rather than being a collection of isolated incidents that can be viewed in a vaccuum, it’s an open sport with few stoppages and a lot of intangibles. Some companies – Actim and Prozone, for instance – have managed to collate the raw statistical data for games, but ultimately that’s mostly used for evaluating individual player performances. It’s one thing to say that someone had a good season this year; it’s another thing to identify which pieces of information in a Prozone report indicate that a player is likely to still be successful in three or four years.

The second problem, though, is cultural: there’s not an innate trust of stats amongst most football managers. Certain ones utilize this information to great effect (Sam Allardyce has been a noted proponent of what he terms “scientific” analysis, which probably marks the only time that Allardyce has ever been progressive about anything), but most don’t; the model for building a successful team is still very much the Manchester City/Real Madrid approach of simply buying the biggest names you can afford.

Those of you in the audience who have read “Moneyball” are probably already seeing the striking similarity between the culture of soccer and the culture of baseball. And if you’ve read that book, than it won’t be shocking to learn that Billy Beane – the patron saint of statistical analysis – has taken a keen interest in soccer over the last few years.

Beane’s interest in soccer goes back to 2003, when he went to England to watch the rugby World Cup and instead spent a lot of time watching Spurs. His long-term love affair continued with a week-long trip to Germany for the 2006 World Cup, and a loose connection to the San Jose Earthquakes was formed when the Oakland A’s ownership group purchased the MLS side in 2007. An article in “The Star” from 2007 even listed Comolli as one of Beane’s tutors in the sport.

A year later, that informal relationship was formalized when Spurs and the Earthquakes announced that they had entered into a partnership. The partnership was announced on October 9th, 2008; unfortunately, Spurs were in the midst of a crisis season at the time, and manager Juande Ramos was sacked thirteen days later. Comolli – whose players hadn’t yet panned out – was released the next day.

Two years later, it’s hard to see what he did wrong. Transfers made under his direction include the following:

• 2005-06: Tom Huddlestone (from Derby for £4.1 million); Aaron Lennon (from Leeds for £1 million)
• 2006-07: Dimitar Berbatov (from Bayer Leverkeusen for £13.8 million); Benoit Assou-Ekotto (from Lens for £4.4 million)
• 2007-08: Gareth Bale (from Southampton for £12.9 million); Younes Kaboul (from Auxerre for £6 million); Darren Bent (from Charlton for £21.8 million); Kevin-Prince Boateng (from Hertha BSC for £6.9 million)
• 2008-09: David Bentley (from Blackburn for £ 19.4 million); Giovani dos Santos (from Barcelona for £5.2 million); Heurelho Gomes (from PSV for £7.9 million); Luka Modric (from Dinamo Zagreb for £18.5 million); Roman Pavlyuchenko (from Spartak Moscow for £15.3 million)

That’s not, of course, a spotless record. David Bentley was a waste of money, Roman Pavlyuchenko was probably overpriced, and Giovani dos Santos has failed to pan out. Younes Kaboul was sold a year after purchase to Portsmouth, only to be brought back by Harry Redknapp last January after being “much improved”.

Even with those blemishes, though, one would have to say that Comolli did a pretty good job. Huddlestone is today a central figure in Spurs’ midfield, while Assou-Ekotto is a solid-if-not-spectacular left back. Berbatov was sold on to Manchester United for more than double the price, while history shows that Darren Bent’s sale to Sunderland (by Redknapp) was probably a poor piece of business. And that’s without mentioning the crown jewels of his tenure – Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. In fact, more than half of the Spurs team that faced Inter last night was comprised of players that Comolli brought in. His record with Saint-Etienne – which started rocky – is likewise fairly solid; the Ligue 1 side are currently in fourth after last season’s “rebuilding” year saw them finish in 17th.

Liverpool’s hire of Comolli fits with NESV’s general strategy of how to run a team. The Red Sox are noted admirers of Beane’s philosophies; for a day or so in 2003, they even became his employers. When Beane turned them down, they hired Theo Epstein instead; Epstein then went straight to beating Beane at his own game, winning two World Series while the Oakland A’s toiled in obscurity.

That game, of course, is the identification of inefficiencies in the marketplace; it’s finding players that are worth a whole lot more than what they’re being sold for. For Beane’s Oakland A’s, that meant being able to compete on a shoestring budget; when the Red Sox backed that technique with money (and thus made the market more efficient), they closed the loopholes Beane operated in.

The move for Comolli, then, has shades of the Red Sox hire of Epstein in it; both were formerly involved with Beane, and both are being brought in to help a team win by buying smarter. For Liverpool – who’ve recently seen their debt removed and money freed up – this is a sign that Liverpool’s new owners have done a little homework and found someone who fits their philosophy to run the show. It’s a sign that, when it’s all said and done, there IS a long term plan at the club, regardless of how terrible their on-pitch performance appears to be right now.

Avoiding the Drop

Tweet