Comolli’s No. 1 focus was on player recruitment, but his style and approach caused obvious friction — particularly with the club’s manager, Martin Jol, who later complained his boss signed players without his agreement. The relationship did not end well.
If Comolli’s approach sounds like “Moneyball”, that’s because it partly is. His ideas around data had already been forming by 2006, when Comolli was handed Michael Lewis’ seminal book on Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, and he read it cover to cover. Intrigued, he contacted Beane and the pair arranged to meet at the World Cup in Germany that summer, where they talked about their philosophies on data in sport.
Within two years, however, Jol had been sacked and Spanish coach Juande Ramos named as his replacement. Comolli pressed on with his system, making a number of signings the following season, including a promising young Croatian talent by the name of Luka Modric. But it did not bring success. Amid fractures over the sale of star striker Dimitar Berbatov and the claiming of just two points in their first eight games and sitting at the bottom of the Premier League table, Comolli and Ramos were sacked.
Comolli had lasted three years.
When Fenway Sports Group (FSG) bought Liverpool in October 2010, they appointed Comolli as director of football strategy within a month. At Liverpool, he could not work with — never mind buy — Decision Technology, whose deal with Spurs ruled out the company’s ability to work with other clubs. Liverpool did, however, hire the company’s staff, instead: Michael Edwards moved from Decision Technology and was hired as Liverpool’s head of performance and analysis while Ian Graham, one one of the firm’s key brains, was hired to build Liverpool’s data-science department.
They were just one part of Comolli’s revolution at Liverpool. He brought Luis Suárez and Jordan Henderson to the club — two of the stronger signings of that era — but also had notable misses in Charlie Adam, Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing. By April 2012, Comolli was let go and while he lasted 18 months this time around, the team he had assembled lasted much longer. Graham began work months after Comolli was sacked, while Edwards would be named Liverpool’s next sporting director just four years later.
Together, they helped engineer a way for Liverpool to make better decisions in all facets of the club, including the hiring of Jurgen Klopp, and bring about a spell that saw the club reach the Champions League final on three occasions — winning it in 2019 — and end their painful 30-year wait for a Premier League title.
Comolli did not play a part in that success — Edwards and his team should take all plaudits for that — and it is worth making clear here that data is not the sole reason for success at Liverpool, maybe it is more aptly described as just one crucial supporter of it. None of it takes away from the momentum that Comolli started, though he still believes he was let go too soon.
“It was not fair what happened to me at Liverpool,” Comolli says. “I heard that a few years ago from a connection between FSG and RedBird [who bought a minority stake in Liverpool in 2021.]”
By 2012, Comolli had tried to infuse his revolutionary ideas into English football. It had embraced them and even implemented them, but soon spit him out. “When I got the job at Spurs, I was 32-and-a-half [years old.] I’m 51 now, soon to be 52. In 20 years, a lot of things have changed me as a leader and the industry accepting data, plus data being much better than it was before.”
