Aston Villa Sporting Director Monchi – ‘It was difficult to destroy the figure I had at Sevilla’ – Football España

Former Sevilla Sporting Director Monchi has admitted that perhaps the cult of personality got in the way of his job towards the latter stages of his time in the Andalusian capital. The current Aston Villa transfer guru was responsible for building the greatest era in the club’s history, but the end of his time there was a sour end.

Los Nervionenses have struggled to recover from a slide that started under Julen Lopetegui with Monchi still at the helm, despite their Europa League win under Jose Luis Mendilibar. Monchi held considerable power at the club, but was blamed by some for their downfall in the latter stages.

He explained that he was perhaps too much at the forefront of things towards the end, but that for him, it was difficult 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 do not have that position. There is a buffer in front of me, which is Unai, ‘the boss’, and that allows me to focus much more on what my day-to-day work is, to whittle down my job much more, with the same demands, same nerves, with the same responsibility, because obviously my demands are the greatest there is, that has not changed at all,” he noted.

Being a little more removed from the passion he felt for Sevilla is helping him to do his job by Villa in his eyes, having experienced a fiery two decades in Seville and Rome.

“I enjoy the victories and suffer the defeats just the same and as big a challenge as coming to England has been, once you get into the maelstrom, you try to achieve the most, but within the sporting area. That is to say, it is a different series of 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 that 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 demand on a day-to-day basis was also very great,” he told DAZN as quoted by Diario AS.