Thousands of people gathered in front of the iconic Sevilla club emblem spelled out of bright mosaics outside the Ramón Pizjuan Stadium, surrounded by the logos of 60 away teams. The fight between the Andalusians and A Coruña is still more than an hour away, but the match on April 8, 2017 seems to be a memory.
Fans held aloft banners "Legends of Serbia, Eternal Glory", housed between a huge portrait of Ramón Rodriguez Bedho – better known than the name "Monchi" – and nine other flags representing the 9 proud trophies achieved during the sporting director's time at the helm of the club.
The camera pans toward a 48-year-old man who is looking down from a balcony at the nearby Neveen Shopping Center, where he occasionally holds his head in his hands and gets excited. As in the press conference two weeks ago, when he confirmed that he would leave the Sevilla club where he had served for almost 30 years, tears poured into his eyes.
The timing of leaving the team is very much in line with Munch's personality, low-key but not losing hand and calculation, ensuring that interference is minimized, but most efficient for all parties. Monchi's father worked as a joinery at the shipyard of Cadiz San Fernando in the southern Spanish city. Munch didn't want chaos in his club, but this time, the red and white shirt team in the last game of his tenure, all the condensed attention and passion was completely unsurprisingly focused on him.
Before kick-off, nine scaled-down trophy replicas stood quietly in the center of the stadium, which he had earned at a rate of less than two years, highlighting the modern achievements of the Andalusian club. In the club's 110-year history, only four such trophies have been won until Monchi became director.
Sporting FC Sevilla has a proud history, but five conquests of the Europa League in a ten-year period are unprecedented achievements. He has won more trophies in major European football competitions than any other team, even more than Barcelona and Real Madrid, and has a solipsistic position in the history of modern football.
Munch may have made success the norm and raised people's psychological expectations. But his gorgeous transformation from a Severi Wolf (B) substitute goalkeeper was completed years ago, and he wants to look at the sport from another angle, showing a Sevilla uniform with the "Puerta No. 16" logo in honor of the former Sevilla star of high status, Antonio Puerta. Just ten years ago, in the same arena, the young Puerta had a heart attack in the game and bid farewell to the green field forever, a scene that broke the hearts of countless fans. That's another emotion, it's a team that's been through a lot.
This man has experienced everything first-hand. Prior to his 17 years as sporting director, Monchi spent a decade playing a loyal little role in the first echelon, playing mainly as a substitute for veteran goalkeeper Juan Carlos Ouzoue, who later went to Celta and Barcelona as assistant manager for Luis Enrique, with good results.
Truth be told, Monchi made only 85 appearances at the Andalusian Championship, his career-high record was 26 appearances in the 1996/97 season, after which he experienced the club's relegation to second division. Then, later in the Copa del Rey, Sevilla competed against the weaker club Esla Cristina, which was an all-time low for the club as a whole and for every player.
The goalkeeper watched a high hanging ball fall from the sky and could only curl up in the bottom of the net, giving the home team the most shocking result in the history of the tournament and leaving the home team fans stunned. Anger quickly spread throughout the venue. It is said that Meng Qi was so ashamed that he had to ask the team driver to hide him in the trunk and leave the stadium.
His football career was accompanied by calls for La Liga to go global, and the famous foreign player Diego Maradona was once his teammate and the two are still close today. When he was spotted carrying a fake Rolex watch, Maradona bought a Cartier for him; his teammates also included Diego Simeone, Davao Souk, Tony Poster, Ivan Zamorano, and Bebeto, who together served 13 different club managers and 7 presidents. However, in the camp of flowing water, the "last monkey" is stable.
He retired at just 30, and when he ended his less exciting playing career, that age was also young among the outfielders, let alone the goalkeeper. But he wants to devote himself to a longer-term career. He had studied law briefly and appeared to be of good character and knowledge. During the brief period of his absence, Sevilla returned to the top flight after being relegated at the end of the first season. They fell to the bottom.
Blind and unburdened, the news that Monchi was appointed the club's new sporting director when Sevilla sank in the second division did not stir up any ripples in the Spanish sports media. The club's financial constraints, a personnel decision that can be seen as a cut in expenses, has been struck low-key and understated, as has been the case with his playing career. The board of directors gave him two tasks: to develop a young reserve for the club, and to search for talent at home and abroad and to develop young players. He has achieved remarkable results in both areas, using a continuous and feasible approach, through the club's youth player selection system, continuing to introduce a group of high-quality players to the club, and using a very economical cost to sign new people into the team game, while developing transfer value.
Open a position at a low price and ship at a high price. It's a golden rule in the stock market, but the sporting director has also taken it to heart, and the transfer fees for the following 24 players, Sevilla, cost a total of only 49 million euros, but sold for 6 times the cost – a total of 295 million euros. They are: Andis Palope, Danny Alves, Fazio, Martin Casalis, Adriano, Ivan Lazitic, Baptista, Cedu Keita, Christian Bauersen, Luis Fabiano, Carlos Bacca, Sergio Ramos, Jesús Navas, Alberto Moreno, Luis Alberto, Reyes, Renato, Medar, Jeffrey Condobia, Enzo Maresca, Alex Bidart, Diego Lopez, Kevin Gameiro, Grigoz Krichovyak.
Pragmatism is an important part of his approach to work. In the summer of 2015, he heeded the persuasion of then-boss Unai Emery to sign then-Juventus striker Fernando Llorente, despite his reservations. The following year, thanks to Jorge Sampaoli's insistence, he brought in Samir Nasri on loan. This short-term transfer deviates from his usual player transfer model because there is no value for future selling. However, he believed that bringing in these players would have an immediate effect on the game and that the benefits outweighed the possible risks, so he accepted the deal.
Centre-forwards Luciano Vietto and Stefan Jovitic (from Montenegro, the 151st and last to be introduced under Monchi) were both introduced short-term in this situation. By contrast, the club's longest-serving player, Vicente Ebola, was only three years early.
"No one would put a banner on the pitch that says 'Economically accomplished great,'" Munch was convinced, and of course his words were perfectly logical. Fans care more about winning, Sevilla fans have witnessed many victories, but they should not ignore these details: as the most prolific youth football training academy in Spain, the international recruitment network, they have achieved the results of recruiting and training more than 700 players, showing the modern characteristics and progressive style of the Rosso Rosso, and its sporting director has also injected a personal image into the club, making it a flexible and pragmatic and sustainable performance.
With the rapid return of the millennium to the first division camp, Sevilla have achieved 16 consecutive top ten in La Liga, including many competitions for the title. In La Liga in 2006/07, they missed out on the title. Ten years later, in the final season of Munch's administration, they maintained their top three positions in total points, close to the championship, until the fatigue in March, the performance declined. The result was that under Monchi, the team won five Europa League Cups, two Copa del Rey, the 2007 Spanish Super Cup and the UEFA UEFA European Super Cup in 2006.
When Sevilla B won the second La Liga promotion in a decade and was the only high-level competitor in the B team, the club's thriving youth player selection system attracted attention. Their recent 6-2 win over Valladulide, shortly after Munch's departure, was significant. During Monchi's tenure, Valladolid was the standard in the league, a notch higher than Sevilla's first tier.
Ivan Razitic - Barcelona midfielder and former Serbian captain believes that it is more effective for any club to recruit the sporting director than "10 strokes of a contract" because it is enough to motivate Roma fans to follow in his footsteps and follow the Italian giants.
Undoubtedly, his departure will worry serbian players, because he was a red thread connecting all successes. Monchi still holds a season ticket at the Ramón Pizjuan Stadium, membership number 8554, while his assistant Oscar Arias will stay to take his place.
Arias, who has hosted the clubs Huelva and Las Palmas, will be able to take advantage of Monchi's shrewd ideas and meticulous and effective system to continue to reap similarly rich returns for a while, and it will be a test for Munch to take advantage of his shrewd ideas and meticulous and effective system, and it will also be a test for Munch in a foreign country, cultural differences, and different football environments. One era is over, but perhaps, the other two have only just begun.
(Translator: Yu Fuli)