July 1 marks the start of a new era at AS Monaco football club, with the arrival of Brazilian Thiago Scuro as the club’s new sporting director. At least on paper, because for now the not too successful policy of his predecessor Paul Mitchell is continuing and little seems to change with the arrival of the 42-year-old Brazilian. His only quality that has often been noted in his appointment is that he comes from the Red Bull school. Until yesterday, he worked at Red Bull Bragantino, a club with no great past that reached the final of the Sudamericana (South America’s Europa League) in 2021. Red Bull took over the club when it was promoted to the top division in 2020 and for now Bragantino is no more than a midtable side with no real ambitions.
It’s not the ideal time to join a club like today’s Monaco. After a season in which the club has disintegrated like a terracotta vase on a marble floor, because the management proved insensitive to the permanent criticism of its supporters and, above all, did not pay attention to its unprecedented series of failures. The best-playing Monaco in the past five seasons was probably the team under coach Robert Moreno. The Spaniard was unlucky to have the season cut short due to the health crisis and was never allowed to finish his work.
This was followed by three seasons under director Paul Mitchell, who went against club culture and really only reaped what his predecessors had sown. Under the Englishman’s leadership, most of the players recruited by Monaco only became worthless (Lucas, Boadu, Diatta, Jakobs and Minamino). Fortunately, the club was able to sell a few more players (Tchouaméni, Badiashile and Diop), who were already there before Mitchell’s arrival. With that, it may seem that Monaco have done well in business in recent years, but that was not to the Englishman’s credit. His only merit is bringing the training complex in La Turbie up to standard and winning the Coupe Gambardella with the youth team (but that is also the work of coach Barilaro).
Monaco also did not have a happy hand in appointing coaches Niko Kovac and Philippe Clement, as both coaches failed to achieve the set goal. Kovac was sacked after a year and a half without it being clear why this happened and Clement never let the team play well, except in the closing stages of the 2021/22 season. Under the Belgian, every set goal was not achieved and often a favorable position was unnecessarily forfeited.
It would be nice if Scuro quickly broke with this policy and did not make a deal cooked up by Red Bull with a new coach, who knows little about French football and does not speak the language. Knowledge of Ligue 1 is the least demand Scuro should make of the coach because he himself is already unknown. According to well-informed circles, the 53-year-old Austrian Adi Hütter would be a candidate. He has a past with Red Bull Salzburg and no exaggerated success in the Bundesliga, but guided Eintracht Frankfurt to the semi-finals of the Europa League, where it was eliminated on penalties by eventual winner Chelsea. He also spent one season at Borussia Mönchengladbach without success, in which his team won as often as they lost in the Bundesliga.
A Scuro-Hütter duo seems doomed in advance to fail on the Mediterranean, where football is played differently and, above all, football is experienced differently than on an Alpine meadow. The question most Monegasques ask themselves: “Why and who drove the club into the hands of Red Bull?” AS Monaco has always been the club of fun and attractive football with players such as Jean Petit, Delio Onnis, Manu Amoros, George Weah, Youri Djorkaeff, Thierry Henry, Ludovic Giuly and Kylian Mbapé. Scuro has a lot to do to get the old soul back into the club. He should do better than Paul Mitchell and not copy his policies.
