Former Birmingham Mail reporter Ashley Preece, who closely followed and reported on Johan Lange’s work at Aston Villa, has given rave reviews of Tottenham’s newest addition.
Six months on after Fabio Paratici’s resignation from his role as Tottenham’s managing director of football, the club finally confirmed this week that they had appointed Lange as their new sporting director.
The Dane has plenty of experience in the game, having previously worked as FC Copenhagen’s technical director for six years.
It was explained by The Evening Standard’s Dan Kilpatrick on Tuesday that Lange will not be in charge of running the club’s entire football operations as Paratici was, and will instead manage recruitment, analytics and talent ID across Tottenham’s senior and academy teams.
Preece has now revealed that the 43-year-old is well-suited for that role, adding that he believes in a date-led approach to player identification, which proved successful during his time at Villa Park.
(Photo by Stephen Pond/Getty Images)
What can Tottenham expect from Johan Lange?
When asked about Lange, the journalist told Football.London: “A vast, extensive knowledge of European football. He had a coffee with reporters not long after joining Villa and it was pretty clear just how obsessed he was with football.
“He’ll bring new methods that will be very much data-led. Lange is all about stats and numbers and, prior to Villa signing Matty Cash in 2020, the Dane sat down with the player and his family in Greece and went through data on his laptop, outlining just how good a fit the ex-Forest man would be.
“Cash, by the way, has gone on to become a star performer. But in short, Spurs have a top operator here who knows his way around sounding out ideal transfer targets to fit in with a manager’s way of playing.”
When asked about some of his success at Villa, Preece said: “His first transfer window was pretty solid. Lange worked alongside then-goalkeeping coach Neil Cutler to sound out Emi Martinez who hasn’t turned out too badly for £20m (cheers, Arsenal).
“Cash and Ollie Watkins were also star signings that summer, two players who continue to go from strength to strength. Emi Buendia (£38m), Leon Bailey (£30m), Boubacar Kamara (free) and Alex Moreno (£12m) would be the other standouts, while Lange was very much behind the surprise deal to bring in Colombian striker Jhon Duran from Chicago Fire in January.
“Lange was actually in the States to scout Duran’s then-teammate Gabriel Slonina (now at Chelsea), but the decision was made to race ahead of the pack to snap up Duran, 19, who’s viewed as a real star of the future. Check his goal out against Palace this season, by the way!”.
When quizzed about whether Lange is good at identifying young players for the future, the reporter responded: “Yeah, very much so. Lange worked alongside academy manager Mark Harrison and identified top talents from Holland which included Lamare Bogarde and Sil Swinkels.
“Lange is all about the future value of players which is something he did really well at his previous gig at Copenhagen. Villa’s 19-year-old Colombian striker Duran could turn out to be Lange’s best-ever signing. We’ll wait and see.”
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By the sounds of it, Lange is an appointment that very much fits with Tottenham’s new data-led recruitment strategy, which the club evidently had plenty of success with during this summer’s transfer window.
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