Damien Comolli: How the man who signed Henry, Bale & Suarez is reshaping Toulouse
2025-01-08
Category: sports

The city of Toulouse is better known for rugby than football but with the man who brought Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie, Luis Suarez and Luka Modric to England now at the helm, that tide could be turning. Since Damien Comolli became president in 2020, Toulouse have returned to Ligue 1 and won a first ever Coupe de France in 2023. They have also developed one of the best youth academies in France - 19 players are currently representing the national team between under-15s and under-21s level. "We want to bring the academy players into the top professional side fast, so we play and train with all the players in the same way," Comolli tells BBC Sport, from his glitzy office overlooking the beautiful Garonne river."We are always looking at what we call our succession planning. Right now we are looking at boys born in 2008 in our academy to see how we can get them in our first team, rather than find talent outside."Traditionally, however, Toulouse have struggled to hold on to their best talents."We lose our players early to other clubs," explains Comolli, who has managed to take a positive from the situation. "This unwanted rotation of players helps us to get players in the first team fast." One current prospect exciting Comolli is 19-year-old goalkeeper Guillaume Restes, who joined Toulouse's academy aged six and established himself as the club's number one last season."Our goalkeeper has the highest transfer market value in the world for an under-19 goalkeeper," says Comolli. "Our 18-year-olds get exposure to first-team football very quickly. This year, seven players from the academy are playing for the first team."
'We got Van Persie for peanuts'
It is not just young players being poached. Toulouse's Scottish head of recruitment Brendan MacFarlane left at the end of last season to join Manchester City.Comolli found his replacement at Leicester City in Viktor Bezhani.In fact, few foreign club presidents know English football as well as Comolli. He worked under Arsene Wenger at Arsenal as head of recruitment and was director of football at Tottenham and Liverpool, bringing in some remarkable talent.So how does he do it?"I didn't find Thierry Henry, let's say I recommended him to Arsenal," he explains. "I looked at highly technical players with incredible drive and motivation to be successful and to develop themselves, and who can make the right decisions at the right time on the pitch."This is definitely the case when we [Tottenham] signed Gareth Bale when he was 17 and Luka Modric. This was the case for recruiting Robin van Persie [at Arsenal] when we got him for peanuts."When you see the drive in these young players who want to beat up the opposition and improve every day, plus their decision making, that is the recipe I was looking for at the time."On top of promotion and the Coupe de France triumph, Toulouse also beat Comolli's old club Liverpool at home in the Europa League group stage last November.He says his two take-aways from his experience in English football are the sense of community and the use of data and statistics."It's quite simple to explain," he says. "We have a lot less money than everyone else, so if we try to do the same as everybody else with less money we are going to fail."My obsession is how to find a competitive advantage in the market and that is by using data and numbers when we recruit coaches and players, and using data when deciding playing style and when to rest players or to train players more. We use data to optimise our transfer budget and wage bill."Since he took over as club president, attendances have rocketed from 5,000 to sometimes 30,000 for home games. Again, he took ideas from his time in English football."I was extremely privileged to work with people like David Dein, who created the Premier League, alongside Daniel Levy and [learned] from Kenny Dalglish, when I was at Liverpool," he explains."I also learned what not to do running football clubs. What I took from English clubs is a sense of community. I think about what I learned from my time at Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool - in other words, the footprint of the football club within the local community."
Comolli is not afraid to dip back into the English market. Charlie Cresswell, an England Under-21s international, joined from Leeds United in the summer.Comolli says he has his sights on two other players in the lower English divisions in January - if the price is right and the players he has in mind are prepared to move to the south west of France.Comolli, 52, is now on the board of the French Professional Football League (LFP) and has several priorities. Making French football more watchable on TV and getting more fans to pay to watch it are among them. He says between four and six million people illegally stream French football games at weekends.Another is improving the quality of French referees. In his words, they are "a disaster" and there is no love lost between the two.His other priority is women's football."If I had one wish for European football outside of England, I would provide young girls with facilities and changing rooms that would enable them to play football just like the boys," he says."70% of girls who play sports, including football, stop playing because of sexism from boys and because there are no pitches, no changing rooms, not enough coaches, not enough teams. I hate that."We have created a group in Toulouse, 'The House of Women Sports'. It's a first in France to provide facilities for young female players to give them more contact time with a ball, whatever the sport."