What's up with reported Spurs director of football target Monchi?

Sevilla is in turmoil, mostly due to the contract status of a man named Monchi. He's said he could leave for other opportunities at the end of this season, with one of those opportunities reportedly being a position with Tottenham Hotspur. I can tell you have a lot of questions and want to learn more!

Who is Monchi?

Monchi is the footballing shirt name and ultimately still professional name of Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo, the sporting director at Sevilla FC. Monchi became the sporting director shortly after retiring from football and has held the position for 14 years. In that time, he's made some huge signings, most notably Dani Alves, Seydou Keita, Adriano and Ivan Rakitic, who were all eventually sold to Barcelona for ridiculous sums of money. A lot of other bargain signings and youth trainees went on to be sold for massive sums.

By doing this, Monchi's kept Sevilla very competitive on a tight budget. The club has won the Europa League/UEFA Cup three times since he took his current position and the Copa del Rey twice. He is very good at his job, and would make a great director of football for any club in Europe.

Wait, don't we already have a director of football?

We do! Last summer, we hired a gentleman by the name of Franco Baldini away from Roma to serve as our new director of football. He was the apparent mastermind behind all the signings we made with the Gareth Bale money, some of which have turned out well. Others have not.

He pretty clearly nailed the signing of Christian Eriksen. After a blah first year, all of Nacer Chadli, Erik Lamela and Etienne Capoue look like really nice buys. Paulinho, Vlad Chiriches and Roberto Soldado? Not so much.

For this summer, he clearly gets a grade of incomplete. We'll see how Federico Fazio, Benjamin Stambouli, Michel Vorm and Ben Davies pan out. So far, I think we're all letting out a collective "meh".

Is there any evidence he's getting fired soon?

Beyond this Monchi rumor? Not at all, though there was a whole lot last spring. We wrote about Baldini potentially getting canned three times. Bryan A. wondered if he'd take the blame for a bad season, also wrote up this rumor about him getting sacked so the club could focus on "home-based" players, and I hit the rumor that he'd exit due to a lack of power. Ultimately, he remained employed by Spurs.

Would Monchi get more power than Baldini?

Yeah, probably. Mauricio Pochettino's worked under a director of football before, Daniel Levy's given up power to one before, and Monchi's track record is basically flawless. If he got hired at the club, he'd presumably have more power than Damien Comolli or Baldini ever did.

Is anyone else interested in hiring Monchi?

Yep! Bayern Munich and Barcelona are rumored to be interested. Those clubs are both bigger than Tottenham Hotspur!

So we have basically no shot at hiring this guy?

Not unless he has personal or family reasons that have him dead-set on relocating to London. That could trump prestige or money -- he's stayed at Sevilla for 14 years, after all -- but it's literally the only conceivable reason he'd opt to join Spurs instead of one of those two clubs.