When Wolfsburg sporting director Jorg Schmadtke “retired” at the start of the year, his local newspaper decided to ask the great and good of German football for their memories.
The accounts – published in Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung in January – make for fascinating reading.
Oliver Bierhoff, the former director of the German football federation, recalled the time they were both on military service and playing for the army football team and Schmadtke stood up to a particularly intransigent sergeant who threatened him.
“He is a special person and someone who says things clearly and doesn’t shy away from the consequences,” he wrote.
A few themes emerge. Time and again his former colleagues speak of his sharp mind, willingness to innovate, his eye for a player, directness, honesty, thirst for debate and inclination to address difficult issues “head on”.
His former assistant Dieter Hecking recalled a 30-minute argument that got so loud that their secretary knocked on the door with a couple of chamomile teas to try and douse the tension. “We argued like crazy but three minutes later, we were friends again,” he says.
At the top of the page there was a testimonial from Jurgen Klopp, recalling how – as a 19-year-old who was all “thin bones and long hair” – he had a trial that he “flunked with a bang” at Schmadtke’s former club Fortuna Dusseldorf.
“Jörg has probably remembered that to this day. He never offered me the chance to become a trainer at any of his clubs,” he wrote.
“He probably thought ‘If Klopp can’t play soccer, he can’t be a good coach’. I would have loved to work with him at some point. I’m sure it would have been a very good fit because for me, he’s a great personality.”
In a few days, all that will change and with it a new era at Liverpool will be ushered in.
i understands that Schmadtke has agreed to replace Julian Ward as the club’s sporting director and will begin work at Anfield on 1 June, a shock appointment but one that those who have witnessed his work believe could end up being an inspired one.
“He said he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren and travelling but few of us thought a guy like him who is so obsessed with football would stay retired,” Andreas Pahlmann, a reporter at Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, tells i.
“Even though Klopp spoke so highly of him, no-one saw Liverpool coming so it will be interesting to see how he does. He is certainly smart enough, he’s a special character. He looks further ahead than other people – some people are thinking about the first or second step, he’s already onto the fifth or sixth.”
The appeal to the Reds, then, is obvious.
While Liverpool’s current winning run illustrates the team is in more robust health than many imagine it shouldn’t cloud the bigger picture. Substantial change is required if they are to return to English football‘s summit.
That goes for more than just the anticipated overhaul of the squad, which is likely to arrive 12 months too late to save this season. It applies to conversations behind-the-scenes, where there is a feeling among some in the Premier League that Liverpool’s tendency to promote from within has allowed complacency to creep into some decision making.
In Schmadtke they appear to have opted for creative tension and probably a shorter term fix than some of the other candidates spoken to.
i has learned that advanced talks were held with Roma’s Tiago Pinto, a self-styled club builder who is big on creating a culture and development environment.
“He proposed to replicate what he had done in Rome but Liverpool decided to go with a quick fix to their project which is okay,” one source with knowledge of the discussions told i.
Instead they have turned to Schmadtke, whose most recent posting as “manager” at Wolfsburg – the term means something more akin to a sporting director in Germany – saw him transform the culture at the club.
“Wolfsburg has always been over ambitious, they overpaid players who didn’t perform and the club was in trouble when he changed the whole idea there,” local journalist Pahlmann tells i.
“The idea instead was to buy players who they can re-sell if they need to. So they didn’t pay more than £50million for players and it worked. They got back into Europe and were competitive again through good recruitment.”
Liverpool will have more than that to spend, but the decision to walk away from the Jude Bellingham pursuit is evidence of a club aware that difficult calls sit somewhere on the horizon. If they are edged out of the top four by Newcastle and Manchester United, the margin for error diminishes further.
Schmadtke arrives with recruitment decisions already made for this summer. Moves for Mason Mount, Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch have long been worked on but it will be the charismatic German’s job to freshen things up and move the club back to the hungry culture that saw them rule the world not that long ago.
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