Monchi, Aston Villa sporting director – “It was difficult to destroy the figure I had at Sevilla”

Former Sevilla sporting director Monchi admitted that perhaps the cult of personality got in the way of his work 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 history of the club, but at the end of his time there was a sour ending.

Los Nervionenses have struggled to recover from a slide that began under Julen Lopetegui Monks still at the top, despite their victory in the Europa League under Jose Luis Mendilibar. Monchi has had considerable power at the club but has been blamed by some for his decline in the latter stages.

He explained that he was perhaps too ahead of things towards the end, but that for him, it was hard to stop the train once it had started.

“This figure was created little by little and it was already difficult to destroy. Here the circumstances are obviously different, because I do not have this position. There is a buffer in front of me, which is Unai, 'the boss', and that I allows me to focus much more on what is my daily work, to lower my work much more, with the same requirements, same nerves, with the same responsibility, because obviously my questions are the biggest there is , which is not not changed at all,” he noted.

Being a little more distant from the passion he felt for Seville, helps him to do his work from Villa in his eyes, after having lived two burning decades in Seville and Rome.

“I like victories and suffer defeats equally and a challenge as big as coming to England has been, once you enter the maelstrom, try to get the most, but in the sports area. That is, it is a serious of different circumstances that I dealt with in Seville, here I will not do it, and that allows me more tranquility.

“My public profile is much lower. Here I can go out without anyone telling me that I must sign a striker, although that has already changed. I said that a year ago, although now they know me more.. . but it has nothing to do with what I lived in Seville, or in Rome, where the level of daily demand was also great,” he said to DAZN as quoted by AS Diary.