Raul Sanllehi Interview

[BigPoppaPump]

Yeah I don't really buy into this. A lot of the players we as a fanbase champion don't necessarily start for every manager or every team.

If you want me to name names, I will give an example - Ramsdale. I am not convinced every manager gets rid of both Martinez and Leno for him but that's just my opinion. You have Sambi there, will the next coach bother with him?

I think it's naive to assume the next coach will want to be judged off Arteta's work if it's a big name, his players are super specific.

It isn't looking good for Sambi now even with Arteta but with Ramsdale you can see he's for a system thats about passing out from the back which all the best teams play now. There's a reason Leno ended up at Fulham of all places.

I just see the current team as a squad full of solid young players good enough for top 4 and a lot of space to grow and build upon. Even if Arteta leaves and a new manager comes in players always come and go anyway, it wouldn't need a overhaul. Better than having lots of old underperfoming players on huge contracts that we had before.

 

[Macho]

There's a reason Leno ended up at Fulham of all places.

Yeah he didn't want to leave London, which doesn't leave a lot of choice.

I just see the current team as a squad full of solid young players good enough for top 4 and a lot of space to grow and build upon.

True. I don't think the salary situation will be much better but not something I would lose sleep over.

 

[Macho]

If he was as good or forward thinking as he projects, I doubt he'd be knocking about in the Spanish second division today.

The problem with this is Raul didn't deserve the role in the first place, but neither did Arteta and Edu. We have no clue what Arteta and Edu's careers look like after the same amount of time they might join him.

 

[AbouCuéllar]

That's not an argument at all imo. I don't like them because of their far right support but Zaragoza have one of the biggest supporter bases in Spain, they've just been managed poorly for ages. They survived the drop in La Liga2 last season and have new owners who are apparently about to invest into the club

Sanllehi never had the biggest profile but after almost two years out of a job taking a lower profile job doesn't mean he's useless. Mislintat left Arsenal for Stuttgart in the second division and took them to the top flight, Ancelotti had poor seasons at Bayern and Napoli and managed ****ing Everton for a year before becoming the best manager in the world again etc

Everton is not comparable to Zaragoza. Zaragoza barely survived the drop from segunda last season, which is not like the championship in England, it's an even lower level (remember, we have often even our B sides in this division). They're 17th this season. Mislintat like Sanllehí has a very checkered history, including being rumoured to be a very tough person to work with, so his trajectory makes perfect sense.

Sanllehí was part of one of the least successful and most disastrous directives ever at Barça and had absolutely no success at Arsenal, his biggest legacy being a very poor hire that took our club backwards.

He is simply not a commodity in football, or a forward-looking thinking, and Zaragoza being the best option he found in the market speaks to that.

 

[AbouCuéllar]

@jones btw your comment is a bit strange, you do realise that almost all clubs in Spain have a far right ultras support? Zaragoza is not at all unique in that respect, nor is Zaragoza a particularly far right city in comparison to the rest of the country.

The only clubs that don't have 'far right' supports really are basque and catalan clubs, whose support is 'leftism disguised as even farther rightism / radicalism', and who are more racist and based on cultural superiority and a history of complete racism and closed off to the world than anyone (speaking mostly about traditional catalan here than basque, but some of it applies, basque are such a weird case not enough time to get into it), but I digress.

Anyways, long story short, weird to single out Zaragoza in this respect, and if you want a football club here with a support without a nasty backbone or history probably you're best with...well, I don't know. Probably not a club in Spain or Italy or anywhere in Europe for that matter.

 

[jones]

@jones btw your comment is a bit strange, you do realise that almost all clubs in Spain have a far right ultras support? Zaragoza is not at all unique in that respect, nor is Zaragoza a particularly far right city in comparison to the rest of the country.

The only clubs that don't have 'far right' supports really are basque and catalan clubs, whose support is 'leftism disguised as even farther rightism / radicalism', and who are more racist and based on cultural superiority and a history of complete racism and closed off to the world than anyone (speaking mostly about traditional catalan here than basque, but some of it applies, basque are such a weird case not enough time to get into it), but I digress.

Anyways, long story short, weird to single out Zaragoza in this respect, and if you want a football club here with a support without a nasty backbone or history probably you're best with...well, I don't know. Probably not a club in Spain or Italy or anywhere in Europe for that matter.

Zaragoza from memory has a strong far right support, won't pretend they're special in that regard but they had a bunch of banana incidents where I've seen the games in question. You're Spanish if memory serves so I'll defer to your viewpoint if they aren't special, last time I really knew anything about them was when they had the Milito brothers and destroyed Madrid in the CDR.

Disagree that all clubs are the same with respect to their support, just because most clubs have some dickheads in their fanbase doesn't make their support like that as a whole - the big Madrid clubs and Rayo are nothing alike in that respect. Eintracht Frankfurt are 100% left leaning and even there a supporter was caught doing a Hitler salute recently in Marseille, guy got battered by other supporters and banned from the stadium by the club in response, don't see that happening at Lazio for example.

 

[Rex Stone]

“I loved it at Arsenal. You cannot imagine — the people in the club, the history of the club,” Raul Sanllehi says.

“I really felt I was at the top of the world there. I love the owners, the Kroenkes. But the last 10 months there were horrible. I had to lay off 55 people, without knowing I was the 56th.” Sanllehi is speaking to The Athletic in his office at his new club, Real Zaragoza of Spain’s second division, whom he joined as director general last June. He was hired by an ownership group that includes MLS side Inter Miami president Jorge Mas and directors of Atletico Madrid, France’s Lens and Colombian club Millonarios.

We will talk about all that soon, but first Sanllehi wants to make it clear there are no hard feelings about his Arsenal exit, even if it came as a surprise to him at the time.
“I don’t feel betrayed by the Kroenkes,” he says. “The Kroenkes had the LA Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Rapids, and all of a sudden, all those teams could not play (due to lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic).

“You still had to pay the salaries. You did not have guaranteed broadcasting revenues. They entered into panic, but a logical panic, as the world entered into panic. Without COVID, I am sure I would still be there, as my relationship with the Kroenkes was great.
“It is funny now, but I remember in December 2019, I had dinner with the four guys: (Arsenal’s then newly-appointed head coach) Mikel Arteta, (technical director) Edu, (head of football operations) Huss Fahmy and (academy manager) Per Mertesacker. On the toast, I said, ‘Now, it is on us. Now it is exactly the model I asked for. If it does not work, we have no excuses’. That team for me was a dream team at that time. Then in March, everything just fell apart. It was sad.”

Sanllehi says this “dream team” of Arteta, Edu, Fahmy and Mertesacker fitted a circular club-management model he learned in two decades at Barcelona, and is now implementing at Zaragoza. “Within the model, there are four points: head coach, sporting director, football operations and academy,” Sanllehi says. “And they need to be very well coordinated.”

Sanllehi’s model was what convinced Ivan Gazidis, then Arsenal’s chief executive, to recommend that the Kroenkes hire him to oversee the transition from Arsène Wenger’s 22 years as manager. “Arsenal had decided to move on from Arsène Wenger — one boss who did everything,” Sanllehi says.

Sanllehi joined as head of football relations in February 2018 and then in the April it was announced that Wenger would leave that summer. It was Sanllehi who identified Unai Emery as the team’s new head coach and when Gazidis left for AC Milan that September, he was moved into a new head of football role. In Emery’s first season, the team just missed out on Champions League qualification twice — finishing a point off fourth place and then losing the Europa League final to Chelsea. Sanllehi says that it was difficult to get immediate results on the pitch while the club’s structure was being updated.

“It was crucial for Arsenal to make the Champions League,” he says. “We had a good coach in Unai, but losing the final to Chelsea made us stay in Europa League, which made the second year hell for Unai. It had been the one-boss model. All respect for Arsène — what he did for Arsenal is unique and probably at that moment in time the best way to do it — but you had to develop, and that is what happened.”

The key to Sanllehi’s model was to have a sporting director or technical director — when he was at Barcelona he worked closely with Txiki Begiristain, who now has that job at Manchester City. So former Arsenal midfielder Edu was tempted away from a role at the Brazilian FA to take the position back in north London in July 2019.

“The sporting director setup was very new in England,” Sanllehi says. “I had to explain that. His highest priority is the first team, but he also needs to be in contact with the academy and to know the transfer market. When things don’t go well, you change the head coach. But the technical director is the one who protects the sporting philosophy of the club and safeguards the model.”

After Emery was sacked that November, Arsenal finished the Premier League in eighth position under new head coach Arteta. Sanllehi still believed the structure put in place, with him at the centre, was moving the club towards success.

I am in the middle, like the director of the orchestra,” Sanllehi says. “Here are the drums, the cymbals, the violins and the trumpets. They are very good, but if you do not coordinate them, they may sound awful. At Arsenal, as head of football, I put Huss, Edu, Mikel and Per — the perfect cross.”
Sanllehi says the English idea of the manager being in charge of all football affairs at a club, the way Wenger had been at Arsenal, or Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, does not work in the modern game. “I do not agree when clubs call the first-team coach ‘the manager’,” he says. “First-team coach is first-team coach, that is enough. Nowadays, the workload is overwhelming, and I need him to concentrate on the first team.

“Anything that distracts you from that is not your responsibility — travel arrangements, the pitch, salary budget, medical department. We will get other people to do that. The first-team coach is short-term oriented — just win tonight’s game.”

When Sanllehi was fired in August 2020, Arsenal’s owners streamlined the model. Edu and Arteta’s responsibilities expanded into areas he had been in charge of. Arteta’s job title was changed from first-team coach to first-team manager. Sanllehi believes this was a mistake, that the once-circular model is now squashed out of shape. “They have betrayed the model a little bit now,” he says. “By going back to the manager at the top, that is a mistake, but that is their mistake. I would have not allowed that to happen. But that’s fine, it is working so far for them.

It’s not really that controversial what he’s saying imo. Mistake is a strong word but it’s a a European concept where the manager is basically plug and play with the squad that the DOF has wanted to buy.

Supposedly makes it easier to cycle through managers without being too acrimonious and needing to overhaul the entire squad.

I’m not a huge fan of it because you’re pigeonholing top managers into a do or die with players they might not be comfortable with.

 

[jones]

Everton is not comparable to Zaragoza. Zaragoza barely survived the drop from segunda last season, which is not like the championship in England, it's an even lower level (remember, we have often even our B sides in this division). They're 17th this season. Mislintat like Sanllehí has a very checkered history, including being rumoured to be a very tough person to work with, so his trajectory makes perfect sense.

Sanllehí was part of one of the least successful and most disastrous directives ever at Barça and had absolutely no success at Arsenal, his biggest legacy being a very poor hire that took our club backwards.

He is simply not a commodity in football, or a forward-looking thinking, and Zaragoza being the best option he found in the market speaks to that.

Wasn't comparing them and I don't rate Sanllehi highly enough to argue otherwise, just saying the argument doesn't hold water to me.

Mourinho tried to take shots at Pellegrini back in the day saying he'd never leave for lowly Malaga after managing Madrid when Pellegrini later won titles at City (and Mourinho went on to manage mighty Sp**s and Roma lol)

 

[sergio_giorgini]

Why is this disgraced fat idiot talking?

 

[AbouCuéllar]

the big Madrid clubs and Rayo are nothing alike in that respect.

Madridistas and Atléticos are as racist as it gets in terms of supports, haha. Actually these were clubs I was going to mention when saying it was weird you would pick out Zaragoza in this respect. Did you see the chants about Vinicius outside the Wanda the other day? Here in Madrid if you want to refer to someone with far right viewpoints or who is quite racist you just say 'ultra'. Whether it's Atlético or Madridista, they're all the same. Football support in general goes along with these kind of viewpoints, it's just the history of the world.

Rayo is a leftist club because it is from the poorest neighborhood in Madrid, but unfortunately being working class and poor here does not really have much to do with not being racist.

 

[jones]

Madridistas and Atléticos are as racist as it gets in terms of supports, haha.

That's what I was saying, you can't lump the two big clubs together with Rayo when the former fanbases are chock full of racists and the latters isn't.

 

[grange]

Raul is a failed mobster who's fallen so far off that he's doing his own PR fluff. He should hire Arteta's firm.

His 5 point pentagram 4 pillared circle bs isn't convincing anybody. The two things I got out of this are that he may need to take Arsenal players on loan someday so he's flirting with us and he still really hates Sven as he didn't mention working with him at all.

I'm glad Tim Lewis mowed the lawn and found the two snakes hiding amidst the weeds.

 

[berric]

Reading this you'd think we booted out everyone and left Arteta overseeing all operations.

When in fact we still have a similar structure, no? Edu just took over from Raul but Per, Edu, Arteta, Huss quartet still work in sync. It's even displayed in Amazon's show when they meet for a weekly report.

Think he's just butthurt and wants some good PR for himself tbh.

 

[jones]

Reading this you'd think we booted out everyone and left Arteta overseeing all operations.

When in fact we still have a similar structure, no? Edu just took over from Raul but Per, Edu, Arteta, Huss quartet still work in sync. It's even displayed in Amazon's show when they meet for a weekly report.

Think he's just butthurt and wants some good PR for himself tbh.

Only one still in the same position as before is Per. Fahmy left the club a year ago, Arteta got promoted from coach to manager and Edu moved up from intern to pitmaster.

 

[berric]

Only one still in the same position as before is Per. Fahmy left the club a year ago, Arteta got promoted from coach to manager and Edu moved up from intern to pitmaster.

Sorry not Fahmy, I meant Garlick.

So you essentially have Arteta and Edu in somewhat bigger roles than before, Garlick deals with contractual stuff and bureaucracy, Per with academy, with Vinai, Tim Lewis, and (I guess) Josh overseeing it all. Don't think Arteta has as much power as Raul wants to paint in this interview.

Also don't see how Arteta is responsible for travel arrangements and other stuff Raul mentioned in the article as well?

 

[bingobob]

The circular cross shaped model, whatever Raul wishes to call it, is the behind the scenes equivalent of man marking vs zonal. Both systems have strengths and weaknesses and nobody complains when the system is successful.

 

[Rex Stone]

The circular cross shaped model, whatever Raul wishes to call it, is the behind the scenes equivalent of man marking vs zonal. Both systems have strengths and weaknesses and nobody complains when the system is successful.

Basically this.

 

[jones]

Sorry not Fahmy, I meant Garlick.

So you essentially have Arteta and Edu in somewhat bigger roles than before, Garlick deals with contractual stuff and bureaucracy, Per with academy, with Vinai, Tim Lewis, and (I guess) Josh overseeing it all. Don't think Arteta has as much power as Raul wants to paint in this interview.

Also don't see how Arteta is responsible for travel arrangements and other stuff Raul mentioned in the article as well?

Raul talks a load of **** of course but most of that is just pithy PR chat, neither coach nor manager do travel arrangements ffs. Definitely think Arteta has a lot more power than he would've had under the old regime though.

 

[Rex Stone]

@jones i subscribe to great man theory (like Jeff for example) so this fits in with that.

Loving a gigantic corporate structure full of faceless technocrats might be appealing to you but I’m a decision maker. I do rather than focus group.

 

[Entropics]

Man gave us our first (and only so far) world class prospect in the post Wenger era with Saliba, would happily take him back just for that.