As a player he was always in the spotlight. In his new job as Technical Director of Red Bull Soccer, Mario Gomez (38) currently feels most comfortable in the second row. In the football podcast “Phrasenmäher” he reveals great anecdotes from his career, whether he can imagine Jürgen Klopp at Red Bull and what he thinks today when he sees the pictures of him running around the pitch with his upper body bare after games. Gomez reveals…
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► How Cristiano Ronaldo changed world football with his Instagram account
Gomez: “You can think whatever you want about Cristiano Ronaldo. But when you talk about influencers, he was the only one who had stark added value for an entire generation. He shows everyone every day how hard you have to work to have a body like that, and the young players all follow him. They all don’t drink alcohol anymore, they all go to the gym in their free time, they all have a private physiotherapist, they all drink filtered water four times. The dedication and professionalism for the job is much greater today and that has a lot to do with Cristiano. Even Lionel Messi is on his way to becoming a Ronaldo. Suddenly he’s hanging out in the gym too because he knows – hey, the guy is three years older and still in great shape, I have to step on the gas now! That’s the power that social media can have.”
► Whether good looks harm a footballer
Gomez: “Yes and no. It also depends on how much you live it out. I always have to smile when I see photos of myself strutting around the pitch after games with my upper body bare – like a rooster doing a rutting dance (laughs). I wouldn’t do it today, especially since swapping jerseys never meant anything to me. There was only one player I ever asked and that was Claudio Pizarro.”
► What he thinks of “Mucki-Mesut” Özil
Gomez: “First of all, it’s admirable how he pulls it off. However, I am someone who believes in the happy medium because I have experienced swings in both directions and know that extremes often lead to nothing good. I don’t know what his mission is behind this. It looks a bit crass and wouldn’t be my thing – but that’s not the point. When you come out of a career in which you received a lot of encouragement and praise for years, you naturally look for something that fulfills you. Mesut now seems to have found this in the gym. He also played with Ronaldo and maybe thinks: Now I have time to become a little Cristiano.”
► Why he received offers from Bayern after leaving Bayern in 2013 Real and Atletico Madrid turned down and moved to Florence
Gomez: “Atlético had made FC Bayern the best offer for me at the time, but I was afraid of Diego Simeone. I knew that the way I played didn’t fit his style of football at all. Real wanted me as a challenger to Karim Benzema, who was not having a good phase at the time. Carlo Ancelotti previously wanted to bring me to Paris St-Germain. But when I left Bayern after four years, I thought: Florentino Pérez is president at Real, he’s like Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge at Bayern – the same thing in green. And then – after I felt like I was only sent off from Bayern with a handshake at the end – I wasn’t in the mood for it anymore. Unfortunately from today’s perspective, because now I see things completely differently. Florence showed me that as a challenger they wanted to dethrone Juve with a new team and a new stadium, and I thought that was cool.”
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► When he noticed that it was in Florence will not run smoothly
Gomez: “It started off great with goals and wins. In one of the other games we played 1-1, and after the final whistle our South Americans turned up the music in the dressing room and danced. I was so upset and just thought: Hey, did we win? NO! That’s exactly the difference between a top club and a challenger – they are happy with much less, and that’s why I tell every player today: Once you’re at one of the top 8 clubs, you have to make sure you’re there stay.”
► How he ended up in the Red Bull cosmos
Gomez: “Oliver Mintzlaff (who advised Gomez as a player; editor) said to me early on: ‘You’re coming to us!’ In the last three years of my career we have been working on what a unit could look like in which we can make a difference.”
As technical director, he is now responsible in the background for the structures of the Red Bull clubs in Brazil, New York and Leipzig. Gomez: “I’m looking forward to starting my second career and not just being in one place. The global topic therefore really appealed to me.”
Gomez with Phrasenmäher presenter Henning Stieft (r.)
Photo: Nadine Rupp
► What fascinated him about Red Bull founder Didi Mateschitz
Gomez: “He lived the motto ‘giving wings’ with every fiber of his being. It’s so brilliant and fits in perfectly with who I want to be that I feel totally at home here. Mr. Mateschitz allowed the athletes to develop freely. If Red Bull chose you as an athlete, you could be sure of 100% support. Red Bull has taken so many athletes to the next level in all areas. That’s brutal – and that’s exactly what he set an example for.”
► Whether he Jürgen Klopp at Red Bull
Gomez: “I have absolutely no right to talk about Jürgen Klopp’s future, but one thing is clear: in football there is no club or organization that would close the door to Jürgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola. When you see what the two of them have achieved over the last 20, 25 years, it’s absolutely crazy, especially since they never really took a break and always went at this crazy pace.”
Impossible goal puzzle in the Clasico in the Bundesliga!
Source: Image04/23/2024
► Which player he would get immediately if money was no object
Gomez: „David Alaba. For me he is the personified leadership figure in football. No barkers, no shithouse slogans. He has a natural leadership from another planet. When he joined the professionals at Bayern, he looked at us with wide eyes because we were superstars for him. To then go this route and be the undisputed leader at Bayern is brutal. And then at Real Madrid with Sergio Ramos, in a very short space of time, we forget the man who was the only one who put Cristiano Ronaldo in his place ten years ago – that is the ultimate discipline!”
► A headline he still wants to read
Gomez: “RB Leipzig wins the German championship!”
► What needs to change for this
Gomez: “What we lack is consistency. Despite all the ideas, training and strategy, you need the sporting successes that change the mentality of a team. When RB Leipzig played their first cup final, everyone thought: Great, we’re there! The second time it was: damn, lost again. In the third, we were initially afraid of losing it again – and we narrowly managed to win our first important title. At the fourth cup final everyone thought: Hey, ONLY WE will win today – and that’s how it happened. If we continue to take these steps, we will be on the right track.”
You can find the phrase mower wherever there are podcasts (including… Spotify and Apple Podcasts). It’s definitely worth listening to!
2024-04-23 14:12:08
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