“No two clubs are the same”

Darío Curti went through different roles within the world of soccer that gave him a global vision of the activity. From that melting pot of experiences he tells us his impressions about current events.

Almost like a sign of destiny, Dario Curti was born in June 1986, while Diego Armando Maradona and the Argentine National Team were on their glorious path to the second world star. Soccer would mark his personal history from his first days.

With the help of his father, a motorsports fan who looked askance at the ball, he began a path that became related to soccer from inside the rectangle and that, later, took him from organizing tournaments to his current position. within the structure of the growing Libro de Passes platform.

How did you get involved in football?

I got involved in professional soccer thanks to a coach who opened the doors of his staff to me since he knew how to identify and value my great passion for analyzing, going to the field, training. That coach is Atilio Svampa who directed the first teams of Colegiales, Fénix and San Telmo in addition to having served as youth coordinator in various clubs.

What did you encounter in the world of football in your first professional steps?

With an exciting world, full of adrenaline. With a culture very marked by unwritten but determined aspects that should not be skipped on a daily basis. It wasn't difficult for me to adapt because I think I naturalized professionalization quite quickly. It is logical that one learns by walking, so I took note of the situations I experienced in one club to quickly identify and act if they later happened to me in another. Perhaps today from a distance, I notice that I transformed my frustration at not having been a professional soccer player into being the best possible professional off the field. I consider that there was my fuel.

At the beginning of your career, what differences were there between the image you had of football from the outside with the day-to-day reality inside?

I think the main difference is based on understanding that your passion becomes a job, or rather, your job. Once you understand this, you incorporate an even greater responsibility, at some point a little dangerous if you can't put on the brakes and disconnect from football at certain times.

Your career includes various roles inside and outside the field. What advantages does knowledge of both scenarios give you when applying your experience in the field of management?

I think that the tools that I apply at work have to do with having known various roles close to professional teams and also far from them. I have lived with that versatility for many years. In the field of management, these variants apply some alternative solutions, especially from the communication side.

Today you work within a football-oriented service company such as Libro de Passes. What do you miss about working within a club?

The preparation of a training session based on the game that is to come, the idea that the coaching staff is trying to capture, is missed. The adrenaline before the games, which increases the day before at the hotel and the micro way to the stadium, is unmatched. Today in a football-oriented service company I try to keep alive that competitive spirit that football gives you in your daily life. This attempt has to do with living football and its demands as if we were within a club, we have other objectives, it is logical, but the demands and the industry where we seek to impact are the same.

In contrast to the previous question, what are the professional advantages of leaving the club environment to work in a service company?

The fact of being away from a club or a coaching staff gives you greater availability on weekends, which is no small thing because your head can rest a little more. Maybe in that break you find ideas that when you are well into the game by game you don't have time to make them appear. It's not that you don't have creative capacity, but that the focus is much closer, game-by-game objectives, not so global. From a professional perspective, working in a startup opened my mind to a world that I had no idea about. There are many management tools from the technological world that can be applied in clubs and coaching staffs, especially due to the large amount of information and tasks to be done on a daily basis.

How do you apply your previous knowledge and experience in management and field tasks in clubs to bring success to your current role that also links the commercial aspect?

I apply the context of football in pursuit of the growth of the company. For example, if we have to talk to someone from a club that lost against its classic rival 24/48 hours ago, I suggest postponing that message, meeting or call. If we are going to talk to a Scout from a team, we try to understand what his day-to-day life is like, his situation with the club, the tools he has, and empathize with his work. My job is based on being a link between the client (which can be anyone like me in previous years) and the company that seeks to provide a service to satisfy their needs. A year ago I had no idea what a project manager does, it's a role I had never heard of. I am grateful to Libro de Pasas because although I entered as a consultant, they saw something in me to appoint me and develop that role. Today I am training in the area to acquire technical tools and mix them with experiences in clubs/technical bodies.

How do you see Argentine football in terms of direction and management?

In constant construction. I believe that sometimes, those of us who are aware of advances in direction and management want the growth of this type of areas to go faster, but I think it is more of a personal desire than the logical periods of learning and, above all, contagion between clubs. We also look at other realities a lot, for example Europe, and that generates a certain anxiety in us about the immediate impact on our context.

What difficulties do you face when establishing a management support product such as the Pass Book in a football that still views with some distrust the advantages of work structures dedicated to sports management?

More than difficulties I take them as mini-challenges. No two clubs are the same. There are trends and also contexts, but there are also interlocutors.

The challenge we take is to listen a lot to the people who make up the clubs and build from there. We know that we are in a stage of change, where it is necessary to transform data into information, and we seek to be part of that process.

What virtues and what shortcomings do you observe from your diversity of experiences in the world of scouting?

As a virtue, the quantity and quality of specializations in the area, not only the formal ones through courses but also the informal ones, through exchanges and talks with highly qualified people.

The shortcomings are probably at the time of the professional assessment at a general level, always from a perspective in South America since these are the areas that I live in almost daily. I think that this assessment will go a long way in relation to the growth that is occurring in terms of management of sports entities.

In what role within football do you feel most comfortable? And where do you consider taking your professional career from now on?

It is a very deep question for me, I ask myself it many times a week. I felt very comfortable as a performance analyst in a coaching staff but at one point I felt I hit a ceiling and decided to change. Then I worked as a coordinator in an analysis area and in a technical secretariat, and that is where I think I performed best. Not only because of what I was able to measure but because of what I felt I contributed. A lot had to do with daily management, especially of work groups.

Today in a company that provides a service to clubs, coaching staffs, scouts, agents, I am also in the day-to-day role of coordinating work teams and I am also comfortable, naturalizing quickly leaving the grass. I don't know when the bug of that pre-match adrenaline is going to bite me again, but if it does, I think it will be more linked to the role of assistant-field assistant. In the future I would like to try myself in the field as an assistant in professional football. Little by little I'm gaining the strength to take that little leap and try another of those personal mini-challenges. One at a time, slowly but surely.

Di Pasqua Nicolas