Tottenham technical director Johan Lange has admitted he is ‘changing a culture’ at the club and the closed shop that the position has been in the past.
He’s has been speaking to TV 3 Sport about his position at Tottenham and the role manager Ange Postecoglou plays in the transfer process.
Lange has been at Tottenham since November last year arriving as technical director after a varied career to date that has seen him work as an assistant manager, a manager, a director of development and then a sporting director at clubs such as FC Copenhagen, Wolves, Lyngby BK and Aston Villa.
It’s been a busy period of transfer business for him since his arrival with the January transfer window seeing Tottenham sign Radu Dragusin and Timo Werner as well as move on longstanding players such as Eric Dier, Hugo Lloris and Ivan Perisic.
That preceded a busy summing in which €148.85m was spent on Dominic Solanke, Archie Gray, Wilson Odobert, Lucas Bergvall and Mi-hyeok Yang, while €55m of talent left the club as well as free transfers and loan deals.
Throughout all of that Lange has largely remained in the background quietly going about his business and he says that is due to English culture, something he’s looking to change.
“It’s (the lack of public addresses) undoubtedly cultural. Over here, it’s been like that for a hundred years,” he said.
“In the old days, there was a local rich man who owned his local club, and he hired his manager, and then they met on Friday afternoon for a cup of tea, and then they turned the world upside down and found out how the team was supposed to play the next day, and what kind of players they had to buy, and how it went with the ladies in the kitchen, and so on.
The role of technical manager or director of football is becoming more common in the English game, where managers have largely held sway on transfer decisions historically.
That’s a system which worked in the past when managers stayed in their roles long-term but in the high churn, cut throat business of the Premier League is no longer the case.
Tottenham know this themselves, having previously built squads for the managers in charge, such as Mauricio Pochettino and Jose Mourinho, only to see them depart and a new man with new ideas come in.
Their approach under Ange Postecoglou has changed, with a focus now very much on younger, adaptable players for the future.
Lange, though, insists that Postecoglou has not been sidelined in the transfer process.
“It’s not like, you can just put it in a formula and say, well then it’s me who makes the decision at that point,” he added.
“It’s about discussing different topics over months and weeks, and then of course you arrive with a shorter list, and then you discuss back and forth. But to think that it’s a coach who dictates, then I just want him, or a sports director, who says, well, it may be that you don’t think the coach is good, but we have to write to him now.
“That will never give the best outcome for the club. So, it’s about a process where we end up agreeing, that this is our top target.
“We discuss of course our performance and the game, but Ange and his coaches are the ones, who work with the game and the players, for everyday life, and prepare the team for matches.
“And then my role is more to concentrate on the longer term, and ensure that we are successful, not only this year, but also in three years, in five years.”
