Mr Damien Comolli, Stand and be recognized

For the last 15 years,  Damien Comolli has been perfecting his trade by helping teams acquire world class players .  He has worked in both France and England’s top flight football leagues and is responsible for signing some of the brightest names in the game today.  This year’s work for Liverpool FC was no exception and may prove to be a career masterpiece.   Tasked with removing the wrong players along with adding the right ones was going to be no easy task to say the least.  Stand and be recognized Mr. Comolli, we applaud you.

I wish I was in the meeting with John Henry, Kenny Dalglish, and Damien Comolli at the start of the summer.  I would’ve heard the lay out of plans to bring Liverpool FC back to dominance.  I would have watched as they looked over a long list of players to strengthen the needed areas of our squad.  Instead I imagine the first question they all had to answer was  “How do we transfer all of the unused players in our squad and make them look like attractive buy’s to other teams?”  Tough question to answer considering the players we wanted to unload.  It was a pretty tough task considering most of the players we transferred didn’t feature much for LFC.  It’s fair to say that every LFC supporter was worried about trimming our squad of the deadwood.

I had heard about Damien Comolli’s work before, most notably with Tottenham Hotspur.  I need only read a few players he brought to their organization to see his abilities as a Director.  Dimitar Berbatov, Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, Kevin Prince-Boateng, Roman Pavlyuchenko, Gio Dos Santos, and Younes Kaboul.  All brought in By Damien Comolli, all excellent players to have in your squad.  In November 2010  he was hired as our Director of Football Strategy and I had a feeling that if anyone could make the moves we needed, he could do it.  It didn’t take long for his mark to be made and in January he brought us Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll.  The fact that he brought us Luis Suarez for under £25 million stands alone as a great achievement and has proved to be an incredible signing.

Still making big strides at our club, Comolli was promoted to Director of Football Operations on March 22nd, 2011.  So many of us were looking ahead to next season before last year was over but I think we can be forgiven.   When you looked at Damien Comolli’s history of big players, I think we all hoped something like this would happen but few believed it could.  I’m ashamed to say that I thought it wouldn’t happen but was overwhelmed with joy to have been wrong.  When I look at the names we’ve brought in this summer: Charlie Adam, Jordan Henderson, Stewart Downing, Luis Enrique, Sebastian Coates, Alexander Doni and most recently Craig Bellamy.   Couple that with the fact we transferred David N’Gog, Christian Poulsen, Joe Cole, Milan Jovanovic, Nabil El Zhar, and Philip Degen.  I look at that business as a career master piece for our Director of Football.

We also moved the likes of Raul Meireles, Daniel Ayala, and Alberto Aqualini but I wish that we didn’t.  I understand it’s all business and when I look at all the transfers as a whole, I am more than pleased.  I guess looking at those players in hindsight, I wanted either Aqualini or Meireles to stay for options in attacking midfield and I thought Ayala did enough to earn more chances in the first team.  I’m sure these were all considered the right moves and I’m certainly not complaining.  I guess they’re just my last thoughts on players no longer a part of Liverpool FC and I wish them well.

As I look ahead into the 2011-2012 season I see a lot of promise and potential.  Most of the new acquisitions have integrated into the team nicely and I see that continuing.  I’m also looking forward to our Captain returning and playing some lovely football with our new squad.   Mr. Henry, Mr. Comolli, and Mr. Dalglish have all set a very high bar and with the squad we now have it looks achievable.  Let’s hope the hard work keeps paying off.  YNWA