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Jorg Schmadtke has already made big Liverpool change to ease transfer fears
Before Jorg Schmadtke had even checked in for his first day as Liverpool’s new sporting director, he was setting new trends in the role.
During their respective tenures, Michael Edwards and his successor Julian Ward rarely spoke to the media. Edwards spoke twice on the record during his time in the position – both times to official club channels – while Ward will depart after 11 years at the club with an even lower profile.
Edwards was quoted as part of an in-house documentary into the building of the AXA Training Centre in Kirkby, which officially opened in November 2021, while the former sporting director signed off with an open letter to supporters that same month when it was made public that he would be stepping away from duty.
Other than that, Edwards famously shunned the spotlight and never gave interviews and the very same applies to Ward who exits after 11 years at the club.
Schmadtke, who officially begins a short-term contract on Thursday, June 1, has bucked the quiet trend of Liverpool’s sporting directors already after providing a brief interview to Sport1 in Germany on the day it was officially announced he would be succeeding Ward.
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While stopping short of revealing the list of targets who Liverpool are now about to pursue, the chat with the 59-year-old was relatively revealing in how the club are to go about their much-discussed rebuild for a critically important upcoming transfer window.
“Jurgen Klopp sets the priorities,” Schmadtke revealed. “We set him up with a team of data analysts, scouts and so on, so he can then choose from a list of players who he wants to work with. Then I’ll deal with the transfers with the responsible departments in the club. And, in the end, the owners have to be satisfied with the investments.”
The 59-year-old added: “Seriously, transfers are always complicated. When a player moves from A to B, it’s mostly about small things that are difficult to influence and unrelated to making money.
“For example, how the player integrates with his family in the city, what his place in the team should be, how he can show his maximum performance. You have to take that into account. The sums involved in these transfers are almost irrelevant.”
It was an interesting piece of insight from someone who has developed quite the reputation in Germany, even if few Reds fans were aware of that success in his homeland prior to finding out about the club’s interest last month.
The former goalkeeper was first sounded out by Liverpool on April 1 after a recommendation from Jurgen Klopp’s agent, Marc Kosicke. Given the date, Schmadtke initially thought the phone call was someone playing a prank on him until it became clear that Liverpool were very much serious about enticing him out of retirement.
But while Schmadtke’s interview augurs well for those hoping to hear more from their sporting director, his comments should also encourage those who are concerned about Liverpool potentially moving away from a model that has served them so well in recent years.
“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t sign players off ‘stats’ but the information provided from their research does play a crucial role in our decision-making,” wrote Edwards in that aforementioned open letter around 18 months ago.
“Whether it is video, written reports, data, background checks or good old-fashioned scouting from the stand, it all goes into the big decision-making melting pot. And when you make a decision, all this information allows you to mitigate the risk you are taking.”
With Edwards departing and then Ward surprisingly working his notice inside a year, many have understandably become concerned that Liverpool are drifting away from the transfer policy that has underpinned their success since 2019.
But while the fact that he gave an interview was very much a different way of operating as Liverpool’s sporting director, Schmadtke’s summary of how things will work under Klopp and his team of analysts and scouts, however, should certainly hearten supporters that an established and proven way of working is not yet ready to be consigned to the dustbin.
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