Then Arsenal came calling. Did your falling out with (former Dortmund coach) Thomas Tuchel play a part in your decision to leave Dortmund?
Not really. I left Dortmund around six months later than Thomas Tuchel did. When I took my final decision to leave Dortmund for Arsenal, I saw BVB in a fantastic and very strong position, we had just signed Jadon Sancho from Manchester City, we were first in the Bundesliga with a very balanced, exciting squad, and were on an amazing run under our new manager Peter Bosz.
At that point, in October 2017 and after 11 years working for Borussia Dortmund, I just thought it was time to explore another environment and develop myself further. Thankfully, Arsenal was that opportunity.
What made the interest of Arsenal special?
Getting approached by Arsene Wenger was a huge honour and accolade for me. Arsenal had been the benchmark, my personal blueprint, when I started at Dortmund. They were a role model in 2006, playing one-touch football with young talents unearthed in France and elsewhere. They developed them and sold them on for good money. They weren’t yet playing the Barcelona-inspired possession-football; it was fast, vertical, quick transitions, exactly the kind of football that fits Dortmund at its best, with an exemplary recruitment strategy.
Arsene had made an art-form out of doing a lot with comparatively very little. That’s precisely the path we followed, and it is still the approach I follow here at Stuttgart. Dortmund had been used to being a buying club, but their financial challenges no longer made that possible.
The best ideas are often born in the hour of need and that’s what happened. Thanks to some good decisions and having Jurgen Klopp as a manager, Dortmund won trophies again and became efficient. I was lucky to be part of that amazing project and with a good group of people.
And at Arsenal?
There was of course no sporting or technical director at the time. Arsene oversaw everything, a more common English manager approach. My role was head of recruitment and to be a partner for Arsene regarding the squad planning.
After Arsene left, I had an important technical role as a member of an expert group that included Ivan Gazidis (CEO), Raul Sanllehi (head of football relations), Huss Fahmy (director of football operations), Jaeson Rosenfeld (head of analytics), and later by Unai Emery (the head coach).
I had good relationships with everyone but on many topics, given the nature of our responsibilities, I most worked closely with Huss and Jaeson. We have become good friends since, they’re really great guys and they are two of the best and talented people I have met in my football career.
Huss is a really progressive thinker and honestly has an incredible capacity to work smartly across many different areas. He’s brilliant with people and has real integrity, I value a lot that he will always stand up for what he believes in, always pushing for things to be better. Jaeson is the same, he has extraordinary ability to apply complicated points in ways you can immediately use, and he can adapt to anything. His knowledge of the game is first-class and you know he is always working to find the best solution. I enjoyed working together with them and it would be exciting to work once again with them.
And why did you leave in the end?
I joined Arsenal to work with Arsene and to prove myself in the best competitions, the Premier League.
My plan was to learn from one of the best managers in football history, support and challenge him to win as many games as possible and the day he would stop his career as a manager, maybe watch him change to the board level to preserve the values and philosophy of Arsenal and his work, ambition and legacy. Arsene left after the end of the season of course and a few months later Ivan Gazidis left to become CEO at Milan. At that point, Arsenal restructured its leadership.
I applied for the newly-created technical director role and Raul Sanllehi and Vinai Venkatesham, who succeeded Ivan in a co-leadership role at Arsenal, decided to go for someone else.
We then agreed in a very respectful way that I would leave, all entirely amicable.
Originally, my idea was to take a break for a few months, to learn another language, to improve my poor surfing level (laughs) and to exchange ideas with some of the fascinating characters in sport and business, to swap ideas and experiences and generally learn and improve.
But one of the first calls was by Wolfgang Dietrich, president of VfB Stuttgart those days, and I felt immediately on fire for Stuttgart’s project.
How difficult was it to go from signing players for Arsenal to signing players for Stuttgart in the second division?
The basic task is the same. You want to sign the best possible player for the best possible price. But you need to take the different competitions and club budgets and needs into account. It was more tricky after relegation. In our case, we had to build a squad that would work in the second division, where it’s rough and ready and we were among the favourites, as well as for Bundesliga, where the football is a lot more refined.
A player like Silas Wamangituka is already pretty good against deep-lying formations but give him a bit of space in the counter-attack in the top flight (and) you can be sure it isn’t really fun to defend him in these situations. We are happy most of our decisions worked out so far.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning that we added only a small group of players after promotion to the team. In Waldemar Anton, one of our centre-backs, only one of them had any Bundesliga experience. In most of our games we used at least nine to 10 players in the starting XI who were already part of the team that achieved promotion.
One of the new signings, on loan, was Konstantinos Mavropanos, whom you had first signed at Arsenal. How is he getting on?
He has all the hardware and all the software to be a great defender. He has been unfortunate, he’s got a lot of injuries. A pubic bone inflammation kept him out more or less for one and a half years. The moment we thought we could play him, he tore his meniscus. It’s important for us to get him fully match fit. If he can stabilise physically, he’s undoubtedly a Bundesliga-level defender. He’s one of the fastest centre-backs in the league alongside Dayot Upamecano. A super guy, a model professional. You have to admire his energy, all the strength it took to get over his injuries. We’re super happy that he’s been a regular starter in recent weeks. We would like to keep him on loan one more season, if possible. But that will be down to Arsenal.
And there’s also another of your Arsenal signings in the Bundesliga: Matteo Guendouzi, at Hertha BSC. He was recently criticised for playing “adolescent football” by coach Pal Dardai.
I disagree with Pal. If you’re not playing Matteo in midfield, it must be a very strong midfield. Matteo has the personality needed to demand every ball in tight situations and has great vision to play vertical and every other angle. That’s his real strength. As a teenager from Ligue 2, he played 48 games for Arsenal in his first season. I assure you, you are not able to “survive” that amount of Premier League caps playing adolescent football.
He’s a young central midfielder. In that position, players reach their peak at 27-28. He obviously doesn’t get everything right but he plays with a decisiveness and quality that make him an extraordinary player. Dardai criticised him for losing the ball in the box against RB Leipzig but we want players who are brave on the ball, who can move past the pressure. Losing the odd ball is part of that. If it happens, you have to ask for the next ball, and that was what Matteo did and I loved to see it. You shouldn’t try to change his game but work on the details to improve him, if you are able to do so, you make him a “monster” midfielder.
But Mikel Arteta didn’t want him in his squad this season?
I respect Mikel a lot. I’d love to talk to him one day, to understand his reasons for sending Matteo as well as Lucas Torreira on loan, and tell him my view in relation to their qualities.
But it’s his decision of course.
My personal opinion remains that Matteo would still add some extra qualities to Arsenal’s midfield, like Lucas could. Their market values increased hugely after their debut season.
Why didn’t it work out for Emery in the end, you think?
For me, it is impossible to make a proper evaluation. I left Arsenal in early February 2019. I think you can’t say he did not do well in his first season, which was the only one I was together with him at Arsenal. I can’t give an opinion on his second season without having the insight of being there.
Looking back at your signings, was is it a mistake to focus on players you knew from your time at Dortmund? It came across as a little uninspired.
“He only knows Dortmund players”. That was the take, I know. But that can’t influence your decisions. You have to free yourself from opinions and politics as best as possible and be convinced that you’re doing the right thing. You can get it wrong. But those have to be honest mistakes, not mistakes you make because you felt you needed to make certain moves for appearances’ sake.
But, anyway, I am fine to discuss the signings of former Dortmund players.
Let’s start with Auba: Arsenal’s captain. No need to talk about it. His statistics since he joined the Premier League stands for itself. He’s still got the most goals and assists since in a team that scores fewer goals than the other top teams. He was massively important for Arsenal’s FA Cup win with his quality and goals.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan? A swap deal with Alexis Sanchez, a player that would hold no residual value for the club a few days later. Miki was more than a good deal for the squad and for the accounts. On top of it, you gain a player who speaks seven languages and connects with everyone in the dressing room, important in that moment. He’s a top pro and an outstanding person. He leads by example, worked really hard. He led players like Matteo. People underestimate him, I will never do that. I am very happy for him that he showed up again at Roma.
Sokratis? He was there to add something to the group: that kind of aggression, his winning mentality, getting your teeth into the game, winning without playing beautiful. Not to forget, he was a perfect mentor for Dinos (Mavropanos).
From my point of view Sokratis and Laurent Koscielny complemented each other well. Behind them, we had Rob Holding, Dinos Mavropanos, Calum Chambers already as successors and challengers in place and a shortlist of some exciting youngsters to buy, including William Saliba for a reasonable amount of money.
Sokratis, Koscielny, Petr Cech, Aaron Ramsey complemented by the Swiss men Stephan Lichtsteiner and Granit Xhaka, this group were ready to push the dressing room more towards a high-performance mentality. The idea was to have a group of seasoned pros to maintain that hunger.
Petr Cech and Stephan were particularly important in setting an example of leadership for our young professionals and academy players like Emile Smith Rowe, Bukayo Saka, Eddie Nketiah, Joe Willock and Reiss Nelson. All of them were introduced into the professional environment at the time.
Would you concede that Stephan Lichtsteiner was not a success?
Cech and Lichtsteiner are prototypes of winners. They improve your whole team with their mindsets, just being in the dressing room. That’s why we added Stephan. He played 23 games in all competitions, he was meant as a back-up and came on a free. Tactically, he’s one of the best full-backs ever.
In Sead Kolasinac, Hector Bellerin and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, we had three full-backs who have their strengths going forward. We wanted to provide them with someone who had a strong defensive mentality, who could be a proxy for Unai on the pitch, to help the others improve their defensive movement and be a pain in the ass for anyone doing things half-heartedly. He did that job perfectly.
To be quite clear: I don’t feel ashamed of any of those transfers, on the contrary, I will always defend these guys. Not because they were my players but because they were Arsenal players and capable ones. They turned up. The team went unbeaten in 22 games in all competitions, made it to the Europa League final and finished fifth with 70 points. You can say that’s not good enough. But many teams would love to finish fifth now. I felt that we were on the right track and I would have enjoyed the opportunity to develop further at Arsenal. Anyway, I don’t look back. I learned massively and loved my days at the club, in the Premier League and in London.
