Monchi, sports director of Aston Villa: “It was difficult to destroy the figure he had at Sevilla”

Former Sevilla sporting director Monchi has admitted that perhaps a cult of personality got in the way of his work towards the latter stages of his time in the Andalusian capital. Aston Villa’s current transfer guru was responsible for building the greatest era in the club’s history, but the end of his time came to a bitter end.

Los Nervionenses have struggled to recover from a slump that began under Julen Lopetegui with Monchi still in charge, despite their Europa League victory under José Luis Mendilibar. Monchi had considerable power at the club, but some blamed him for their decline in the latter stages.

He explained that he may have been too far ahead of things towards the end, but that it was difficult for him to stop the train once it had started.

“That figure was created little by little and it was already difficult to destroy. Here the circumstances are obviously different, because I don’t have that position. I have a buffer in front of me who is Unai, ‘the boss’, and that allows me to focus much more on what my day to day life is, to reduce my work much more, with the same demands, the same nerves, with the same responsibility, because obviously my demands are the greatest there are, that has not changed at all,” he noted.

Being a little further away from the passion he felt for Sevilla is helping him do his job as Villa in his eyes, after having lived two fiery decades in Seville and Rome.

“I equally enjoy victories and suffer defeats and no matter how great it was to come to England, once you get into the maelstrom you try to achieve the most, but within the sporting field. That is to say, it is a series of different circumstances that I handled in Seville, here I don’t have to do it, and that allows me greater peace of mind.”

“My public profile is much lower. Here I can go out without anyone telling me that I have to sign a striker, although it is already changing. I said it a year ago, although now they are getting to know me more… but it has nothing to do with what I experienced in Seville, or in Rome, where the level of demands on a day-to-day basis was also very great,” he told DAZN, quoted as saying. by Diario AS.