Markel Zubizarreta: “I understand the idea of Barça-Lyon as the great duel, but the Champions League will be a matter for more teams”
Markel Zubizarreta (Mondragón, 1985) has been officially presented this Wednesday as Global Sporting Director by Kyniscatimeshare managing Michele Kang and who owns the Olympique Lyonnais, Washington Spirit y London City Lionesses. The manager speaks exclusively to MARCA analyzing his new professional project.
ASK. Global Sporting Manager… How do we translate your position at Kynisca?
ANSWER. In English names sound quite important, don’t they? [Risas] Within the Kynisca structure I am in charge of coordinating the three clubs that we have today. Each one has its sports director and my figure is transversal to each one of them. Each club has its own identity and its own structure and I am the one who oversees them.
Q. Is your work very different from that previously carried out in Barcelona and RFEF?
R. Regarding the Federation, yes because the federative world is very different. You don’t have football on a daily basis except for some training and here I have too much football. What I did at Barça is different in the sense that here I have three different cultural realities and you have to understand the idiosyncrasies of each place and the training methodology that is carried out, which was something that was discussed at Barça. less because there was a marked line and here my job is to draw that line. Right now we have a Spanish coach [Jonatan Giráldez] in the United States, a French one [Jocelyn Prêcheur] in England and one Australian [Joe Montemurro] in France, which is even funny.
Q. What is it like working with three such different clubs?
R. Each one has its own life process, but we try to have similar procedures in terms of decision-making, recruitment processes or work methodology. Lyon has a structure that works very well, we are talking about the best team in the history of women’s football, although with the change of ownership we have started to work differently. In the case of the Spirit, it has a commercial potential that is outrageous, but being a closed League, having play-offs and a salary limit, it is impossible to resemble Europe. In the case of London, it is a project in which a very big bet has been made despite starting in the Second Division, although the level of the English Second Division has nothing to envy of many European First Divisions.
Lyon is the best team in the history of women’s football and Barcelona is the benchmark club right now
Q. Are there no cross interests?
R. It is one of the potential risks we have in the medium term, especially if we manage to get London City up to the First Division. The Spirit and Lyon markets, which may be the two teams that are in the most competition, are nothing alike. In the NWSL there are Salary Cap (salary limit) and means that clubs cannot compete with the best teams in Europe without conditioning the squad a lot. Right now we are closer to collaborating than competing between our teams.
Q. Between the three Kynisca clubs, 21 signings have been made this summer. For you it will be like playing Monopoly…
R. [Risas] I joined this project late in terms of the transfer market, but it is true that there were many things left to do. The other day, at a match in London, I met the Swedish coach [Peter Gerhardsson] and he looked like: ‘Damn, this guy sounds familiar to me and I don’t know what‘. I told him: ‘We met when I was at Barça, but the last time we saw each other was in the Nations League when I was working at the Spanish Federation and now I am working for the company that owns London City‘. He was taken aback. For me, this helps me keep my feet on the ground and see that if you call someone representing Lyon, many doors open, but if two minutes later you do it talking about another project, there are not so many facilities.
Markel Zubizarreta: “Timeshare is the best accelerator for women’s sports”
Q. Is women’s football ready for the concept of timeshare?
R. I don’t know if he’s ready or not. People associate timeshare with what they see in men’s soccer, that is, the format of a large club that has three mother clubs and where the players end up in one club or another depending on the level they have and if business is not done for take out money Our project goes beyond all that. When Michele (Kang) decides to bet on women’s soccer, she does so in a transgressive way. She wants to bet on women’s sports and soccer is a vehicle for this. The legacy she wants to leave goes beyond winning or losing, it is about improving the conditions of the players in their entire context. I believe that timeshare as we are understanding it is the best accelerator for women’s sports in general and women’s soccer in particular. I believe that this phenomenon will help any woman who wants to play sports to be able to do so, in a few years, in many parts of the world.
Q. United States, France and England. Is Kynisca considering owning a Spanish club?
R. What I know is that we want to grow in terms of different continents, not so much growing in one in particular. From a sporting point of view I am not going to discover all the talent there is in Spain, but from the point of view of developing women’s football there may be other more interesting places. We have an expansive mentality and we will be where the perfect idiosyncrasy is created to develop the objectives we have.
Q. What is Michele Kang like at short distances?
R. She is a very normal aunt. I met her when I worked at Barça through the typical conversation of friendly matches and summer bowling. It is the first time I have worked for the owner of a club, but I can say that she is very close to the project, to the players, to those of us who work with her. He likes to step on the grass, the locker room, to be in contact with everyone. She is not one of those who invests money and walks away, but her philosophy is to get involved in everything that is done. She really wants to change things and push women’s sports to another level. She is super receptive and has a lot of energy and vitality. It is a luxury to be able to work with her and the rest of the Kynisca executives because the level is very high.
Timeshare as we are understanding it is the best accelerator for women’s sports in general and women’s soccer in particular.
Q. Did they sign you to compete with Barcelona?
R. I think that Barça has many virtues and few defects. It has a well-established structure, not only at the first team level, but also at grassroots level. I think that if there is any club that can compete with him, it is Lyon, although the scenarios are different. I know that Barcelona is signing 12-13 year old players from all over Spain, while the regulations in Lyon prevent the signing of minors under 16 years of age who are more than 50 kilometers away from the city.
Q. Do you have Barcelona players on your agenda?
A. If I have something on my agenda, it is players, more than anything because I work for three teams… Players from any club who are of a high level can be on our agenda. We have to start from the fact that, I don’t want to say that we don’t want to sign, but the objective is to influence the improvement process of the players we currently have, especially the youngest ones. Regarding Barça, there is a certain profile of players who cannot be dissociated from that shield. Right now there are many players who are very happy there and others, as happens in any other team, enter the market. We want to create our own identity both in Lyon and in Washington or London and that is why we are on the lookout for interesting players from Barça, yes, but also from Real Madrid, Finland, China or anywhere in the world.
Q. Do you think that the Barcelona-Lyon rivalry will mark an era?
R. They are two clubs with many of the best players in the world. They have fought for many Champions League finals, always falling on one side and last year falling on the other. I think that Barça is now the reference club, not only because it is the current European champion but because it is the team that has surely spent the most money in the transfer market and the one that is renewing players with surely the highest salaries in everyone. You are in a position to invest above average, to put it another way. Lyon, a team with a lot of history, is in a position to recover that throne and we feel qualified to do so. We come from a change of coach that, unlike Barça, is a disruptive and not continuous line, so we have an interesting margin for improvement. I understand the idea of Lyon-Barça as the great duel, but I think there are eight or nine teams – mention Chelsea, Arsenal or Bayern – that are going to have a chance of winning the Champions League and others that have not gone to make friends.
Markel Zubizarreta: “My last name hurt me as a footballer; now I think it helps me”
Q. I wanted to take advantage and ask you about your time at the RFEF. Do you think your work was left half done?
R. The thing is that I have lived through a strange period in the Federation, where you didn’t know when it was being run by a president or a manager, and where it was difficult to do things. Not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t. I was there for a short time, the political situation didn’t help and then I got this offer. Surely I did have the will to be able to do more, but I don’t blame anyone because it didn’t happen, but rather I believe that with the situation itself it was impossible. What I do hope is that there is a time when the Federation can have normality to develop the projects that they consider they have to do and that can improve in every way and in all areas.
Q. After you, no one arrived in your place…
R. That is not a question for me, but for those who are there, although I can imagine that with the changing political situation and the idea that the RFEF had of holding elections more or less quickly, I do not know if it is worth putting someone in charge of something that you are going to change in a month, two or three.
Michele (Kang) is not selling you a sports project, but a life project
Q. Have you set any goals for Kynisca?
R. I remember that when I arrived at Barcelona (2015) the goal was to be in a Champions League final in 4-5 years, but here the journey of each club is different. In Spirit it would be winning the League, in London going up to the First Division and in Lyon recovering the throne in Europe, but when you see it in such a global and transgressive way it is difficult to stop at just that. Michele (Kang) is not selling you a sports project, but a life project. I’ve just started, I’m very happy and I think it’s going to be something that I hope lasts a long time.
Q. The last one is personal. Do you think that your last name (Zubizarreta) has benefited or harmed you?
R. My feeling is that when I was a footballer it went against me. Playing for Athletic Club, and also being a goalkeeper, just like my father had been [Andoni Zubizarreta] It made them see me differently and there was always someone behind the goal to tell me something or other. Then, as a sports director, I have had the feeling that he has been able to help me. Calling someone and telling them my last name has allowed them to trust me, then… [Risas] Now we are both dedicated to the same thing, although at the moment we are not enough competition to bother me.
“We want to take women’s sports to the next level”
The official announcement of Markel Zubizarreta as Global Sporting Director came this Wednesday in an official statement in which Michele Kangfounder and CEO of Kynisca, was full of praise for her latest signing. “He is the best in the game and I am honored by his decision to join our mission to establish Kynisca as the preeminent sports organization in the world. His experience in the Royal Spanish Football Federation and in Barcelona will be invaluable to the goal of Kynisca to professionalize women’s sport and take the game to the next level.”
