The sports director Milos Malenovic swirls around the club and installs followers. The Canepa family, the owners, let the former player agent have his way. Can this be a good thing?
The world is upside down in the FCZ: Cheick Condé celebrates his goal to make it 2-2 in Basel.
Philipp Schmidli / Keystone
Ricardo Moniz has a neat plan. “We want to be giants,” said the new FCZ coach at his first press conference on Friday, “we have to dominate against YB on Sunday too.” Fifth place for participation in the European Cup is “the absolute minimum goal for the last five finals”. And he also leaves no doubt about his ambition to be FCZ head coach next season. “It’s huge,” he says. He is “direct and straightforward”.
It’s that simple. And you would like to believe the dashing Dutchman if you believe in the ideal football world.
Daniel Gygax is someone who apparently has trouble believing in the ideal FCZ world on the same day. On Friday, Gygax will quit his junior coaching job at the end of the season. Gygax is a legendary player in the FCZ, his U17s lead the table by a margin. He no longer fits the FCZ. The sporting leadership is said to have explained this to him for a long time, until Gygax had enough.
Gygax is one of many. Around three dozen positions from the first team to the youth teams have been changed in the last few months. Through layoffs, postponements, “contract terminations” or dismissals of employees who “couldn’t take it anymore.”
Constant distrust, toxic climate of fear
“NZZ am Sonntag” spoke to many FCZ employees, coaches, players and supporters. Nobody wants to see their name in the newspaper or have their name quoted. But the various statements coincide strikingly and show a picture of a club in which the established culture of cooperation is being destroyed. With threats, false promises, incompetence and worse.
There is repeated talk of a “toxic climate of fear,” of “constant mistrust,” of “rough treatment.” What is discussed verbally today no longer applies tomorrow. One interlocutor says that he first researched whether the conversation with the “NZZ am Sonntag” was “a trap”. A trap in which statements would later be used against him. Who is a mole? The picture shows a sports department where everything goes haywire. It shows chaos. A chaos with a system. In the end it’s always about the same person: Milos Malenovic, sports director.
The installation by Ricardo Moniz shows how Malenovic works. He has been working at FCZ since October. First as a “development coach”, then as coach of the U21s, now as head coach until the end of the season. Moniz is flexible. That fits the CV with 13 different clubs in 13 years. As a technical trainer at Grasshoppers, he once met the young striker Malenovic. Twenty years later, Malenovic brings his former teacher to the FCZ. “Milos has developed into a great personality,” says Moniz. You know each other, you trust each other, you are loyal to each other.
Moniz is the fourth head coach this season. After Bo Henriksen left for Mainz in February, Umberto Romano and Murat Ural were allowed to share the job. With three wins in ten games, the duo narrowly saved FCZ’s place in the championship round. Ural in particular always gave the impression that he couldn’t develop. Malenovic always moved nearby.
After the 0-1 loss against St. Gallen, the co-head coach duo had to leave the club. President Ancillo Canepa personally announced that the leadership had decided to “stop the downward trend of the last few weeks through new personnel impulses.” The announcement was supplemented with the interesting personal information that Moniz would be assisted by Johan Vonlanthen.
Johan Vonlanthen? The personnel would be irrelevant if it didn’t represent some of the strange things that have been going on in the last few months. Vonlanthen, who was hired as a “striker coach” in January, has only completed a coaching course for grassroots football. You can read that on the internet.
You can also read the regulations on the Internet, which stipulate what is required of the assistant for the professionals: Vonlanthen’s C diploma is sufficient up to the 3rd amateur league. The FCZ leadership soon noticed this. What to do? Who has a diploma? Romano and Ural are gone, Alain Nef was sent to the U21, who else is there? Oh yes: Dorjee Tsawa. So Tsawa becomes an assistant, experience is not that important.
This would also only have anecdotal meaning if it did not fit into the larger picture of partial incompetence, hasty decisions on detailed issues and strange processes in the company.
“Reinvent FC Zurich!”
Another sign of this is text messages to the head coach with the team lineup. Or young coaches who are said to have found out in a media release that they were taking over another team. A coach who had been transferred was apparently given the explanation that they wanted someone younger in his place. But everyone knew that the new coach was older than his predecessor.
The next example is the long-time employee in a managerial position who notices from a Power Point presentation that a new person without a track record is taking over his job with immediate effect. Or Gianluca Frontino: Frontino came as a talent manager in January, then he was moved to the U21s, and in the new season he will go to SC Kriens. A rise? Or an escape?
Maybe it’s a question of perspective. On the same day that Moniz appears in front of the media for the first time and on the same day that Gygax quits, the “Tages-Anzeiger” publishes a friendly conversation with Canepa and Malenovic. This reveals the perspective of leadership: all natural processes if you want to develop further. “Change management” always leads to rumors spread by dissatisfied people. An anonymous email from March to football journalists about terrible conditions in the FCZ? An example of “fake news” for media people who know nothing about the economic context in a football club.
You ask a former FCZ employee via text message what he thought of this interview. The short answer: “Good lie.” He is not alone with this attitude. From the outside you have the impression that you are traveling in parallel worlds.
Canepa said after Bo Henriksen’s departure that he had perhaps gone a little far when he announced at the general meeting: “We want to reinvent FC Zurich!” Reinvention, meanwhile, is much more advanced. Malenovic only implements what he, Canepa, his wife and the sports director decide. The president is enthusiastic about his sports director. He believes that after all these years of unexpected championship luck, crashes, coaching errors, relegation, constant ups and downs, stability is finally coming. Malenovic takes care of that. This is how the President sees it in the “Tages-Anzeiger”.
The 39-year-old has been officially in office since last October, having been in and out of the FCZ as an “external consultant” for three months. As always when Canepa introduces a new sports director or coach, Malenovic is also “wish solution, ideal choice, friend”. What is new, however, is that Malenovic will have more power than any other FCZ employee in the 18 years under the Canepa family’s presidency. Malenovic uses this power.
Malenovic seems to be turning power into action using the methods he has acquired over many years as a successful player agent. Determined, agile and, if necessary, “aggressive,” as they say in the industry. His idea for the FCZ is to make profits with transfers – whatever the cost. This only corresponds to a small extent with the tasks of the sports director, who is not allowed to represent individual interests but should bring together a large team of employees.
In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Malenovic sold his agency in the summer, it is said. However, several of his former employees are repeatedly spotted at the Home of FCZ. Coaches and players should now know exactly which agents they should get close to and which ones they shouldn’t. Depending on the situation, this can have consequences for your own progress.
Is this all the idea of “reinventing FC Zurich”?
Collaboration: Peter B. Birrer, Fabian Ruch
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