The phenomenal ace confesses to crying a lot when facing tottenham, leaving Leeds, and replacing…….
Former Leeds sporting director Victor Orta exclusively reveals how he fell back in love with football following his departure from Elland Road.
SEVILLE — Victor Orta is sitting in the director of football’s office at Sevilla’s Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium explaining a new personal goal.
For the man who left the same role at Leeds United in May, with four games left of an ultimately lost battle against relegation, that goal is to actually start enjoying life in football again.
He admits there were tears when he left Elland Road after six years – “I cried a lot” – but he has drawn fresh enthusiasm from his return to the club where he built his reputation during seven years as technical secretary from 2006.
“When I signed my contract in Seville, a really good friend in football, Emilio Vega, told me, ‘In football we never enjoy the journey’. So when I signed this contract I said to myself, ‘I want to start to enjoy the journey’.”
He makes it clear that it is Sevilla, not Leeds – the club to which he brought Marcelo Bielsa but whose fans turned on him during last season’s unravelling – that we are here to discuss. “I don’t want to make any noise that can damage Leeds,” says the 44-year-old. Yet if the post-Bielsa period is off-limits, some memories are stirre.
Bielsa, who inspired that long-awaited top-flight return, was “like a scientist making a football laboratory” while “the thing I feel proud about is not bringing in Bielsa or buying Raphinha but the culture I created where, from Maria Dowson in the ticket office to the scorer of the goals, Patrick Bamford, all the people could contribute to the success and were committed to the success of Leeds United.”
And he offers the example of the indoor football game he introduced as a bonding exercise for staff on Fridays at Elland Road – with echoes of Don Revie’s carpet bowls for Billy Bremner and Co.
Here, in the offices of the Sanchez-Pizjuan, he has a new challenge and it is a sizeable one: filling the shoes of Monchi, the man who built Sevilla into a European force.
“It’s like trying to substitute Michael Jordan in the Chicago Bulls, no?” he says of the current Aston Villa technical director whom he worked alongside during his first spell here as the club won their first two Uefa Cups.
“Monchi is Monchi and impossible to replace. I’m here to create another thing – to keep the things that Monchi taught me and to add my own touch.”
Although Sevilla won their seventh Europa League in May, a cumulative loss of €80m euros over the past three years, in a league which applies a salary cap, means Orta must reproduce Monchi’s old conjuror’s trick.
“It’s trying to buy cheap and sell expensive – trying to discover talent before it gets to a top level. This legacy of seven Europa Leagues grew from selling players. The first was Jose Antonio Reyes to Arsenal and after that Dani Alves and all the rest. It was the moment that the team started to win trophies.
“We need to go back to this model because it was the model that built this club. Recent years were a bit far from that, trying to create another model to continually qualify for the Champions League. It was less sustainable and now [we go] back to the model to sign players under 25 and try to sell them in their first or second year of success.”
Thus far Orta has succeeded in shaping a more balanced squad while cutting the annual wage bill from €200m to €180m. Amid the budgetary constraints, he sees ambition. The five-man scouting department he knew now has 24 people.
“In terms of human resources, youth development, big data, facilities, new projects for the stadium and training ground, I found a club that hadn’t stopped after I left,” he adds. “It’s given me hope to say, ‘Hey, we can break the glass ceiling’.”
This includes aspiring to a long run in the Champions League in which Sevilla are competing for a record fourth successive year. After draws with Lens and PSV Eindhoven, they need a positive home result against Arsenal as they look to avoid a third straight group-stage exit. The walls of Orta’s office feature souvenirs of past Europa League finals, left behind by Monchi, but he sees a puzzle to solve in the senior competition.
“We look so special in the Europa League and so weak in the Champions League. It’s really incredible the difference. Why don’t we try to create this special feeling in the Champions League? That’s a bit of an obsession for me and one of the reasons why it’s really important to get points against Arsenal.
“I want to try to duplicate the feeling of that classical night atmosphere at the Sanchez-Pizjuan. It was really clear last season against Juventus and Manchester United how the stadium changed and how the team felt – ‘This is my competition and you cannot touch us’.”
The presence of that old warrior Sergio Ramos should help. “He wants to prove he was in the history of Sevilla not only for leaving in a polemical transfer to Real Madrid but as a good thing too,” says Orta. And, on the evidence of Saturday’s 1-1 home draw with Madrid in new coach Diego Alonso’s first match, Arsenal will find a team fired up following a slow start in La Liga. “He is really passionate. He is Uruguayan.”
Orta’s own passionate nature leads to one last Leeds question, concerning his volatile response – V-sign included – to a fan at the end of a game against Brentford
