Tag: Europe

One of the Best Sporting Directors in Europe

Key Takeaways

Roberto Olabe is leaving Real Sociedad a year early, ending a successful tenure with European regulars.
His career success includes developing young talent and overseeing the club’s trophy drought victory.
Olabe’s potential move could see him targeted by top clubs like Arsenal, known for his success as a director of football. (119 characters)

Spanish football is in a good place with managers and backroom staff in the modern era. Many of the sport’s finest personnel from those backgrounds are from Spain – and they are among those helping to build another golden generation for the country, after its Euro 2024 triumph.

Indeed, in an era where many of the biggest clubs on the planet employ a sporting director alongside their manager, some of the best hail from Spain, such as Txiki Begiristain and Monchi, the former being a huge part in Manchester City’s unprecedented success along with Pep Guardiola. Another name on the Spanish conveyor belt is Roberto Olabe – who has established himself as one of La Liga’s leading directors of football since he took up the role in 2018. With him set to vacate his role at the Basque club in the summer, top clubs will be on high alert to try to secure his services as there is sure to be stiff competition for his signature.

Contract Details

Olabe’s contract runs until 2026 – but he will leave the club a year early.

An inside view of Real Sociedad's stadium, the Reale Arena

Real Sociedad were informed of Olabe’s decision to leave the club before the end of his contract last summer. His time as the club’s Director of Football has seen Real Sociedad establish themselves as one of Spain’s best clubs – and end their thirty-year trophy drought with victory in the 2021 Copa del Rey.

The 57-year-old has been in the director of football role at La Real since 2018, where he took over from predecessor Loren, and has quickly overseen the club’s most successful period in the 21st century. The club have also established themselves as European regulars during his time in charge – with the club’s 2024/25 Europa League campaign being their fifth straight season in continental competition, an unprecedented achievement for the club.

Olabe’s decision to leave comes with a year left on his contract. He made chairman Jokin Apperibay aware of his intention to leave in advance to give the club the required notice and time to process his departure and find a suitable replacement, but the loss of such an influential figure will be a difficult one for the club to move on from.

Career

Real Sociedad celebrate winning the Copa del Rey

Olabe spent the final four years of his playing career on the books at Sociedad in the 90s and even had a brief stint as the club’s manager in the 2001/02 season, where he replaced Welshman John Toshack and helped to ensure the club’s survival in La Liga – although he was soon given a four-month ban for managing the club without a coaching licence. Once he had obtained these badges, he had brief spells with Spanish sides Eibar, Almeria and Real Union between 2006 and 2012 – but had limited success and never took another managerial position from then on.

His return to Sociedad in 2018 was a homecoming for Olabe, then – and he immediately helped the club to secure its place as a regular European contender in Spain’s top-flight, with a policy of helping to develop and nourish young talent in San Sebastián. Success stories for the club under the Spaniard’s tenure include players such as Alexander Isak, and Mikel Merino and home-grown talent Martin Zubimendi, who has become one of the most exciting young talents in the country. Zubimendi was on the verge of a move to Liverpool in the summer before deciding to stick with his boyhood club, with Isak making the club a $60m profit in three years.

Real Sociedad’s Biggest Sales under Roberto Olabe
Rank	Player	Buying Club	Season	Fee
1	Alexander Isak	Newcastle United	2022/23	€70m
2	Robin Le Normand	Atlético Madrid	2024/25	€34.5m
3	Mikel Merino	Arsenal	2024/25	€32m
4	Alvaro Odriozola	Real Madrid	2018/19	€32m
5	Diego Llorente	Leeds United	2020/21	€20m

Next Steps

Olabe is not known to have a next move lined up – but the timing of this announcement with news of Edu Gaspar’s resignation at Arsenal just days ago is interesting, to say the least, especially as he knows Mikel Arteta from his playing days, having signed the midfielder for Sociedad back in 2004. He has been linked with a move to England before, as he was considered for a similar role at Aston Villa alongside Unai Emery, although the club appointed fellow Spaniard Monchi instead.

With such a high-profile job available in the summer, it’s possible that Arsenal could make a move for Olabe, who is seen as one of the best directors of football in Europe, although it is also very possible that the timing of the announcement is a mere coincidence. What’s clear is that with such a highly-rated name set to be on the market next summer, many of Europe’s top clubs will be vying for his signature.

All statistics courtesy of Transfermarkt. Correct as of 13th November 2024.

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November 14, 2024

Facebook, YouTube and TikTok users in Europe get forum to challenge social media content decisions

LONDON — Social media users in the European Union will soon have a new forum to challenge decisions by platforms to remove posts and videos for breaking their rules or leave up others that may violate them.

An “out of court dispute settlement body” named the Appeals Center Europe said Tuesday it has been certified by Irish regulators to act as a referee on content moderation disputes across the 27-nation EU, starting with cases involving Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.

The center is similar to Meta’s Oversight Board, a quasi-independent body set up in 2020 that acts like a supreme court for thorny decisions about content moderation issues on Facebook, Instagram and Threads submitted by users around the world.

Under the EU’s digital rulebook known as the Digital Services Act, or DSA, tech companies and social media platforms are required to work with dispute settlement bodies and comply with any decisions they make. EU officials in Brussels wanted to give EU citizens a way to challenge any decisions made by Big Tech companies as they sought to balance the right to free speech against the goal of curbing online risks.

The center will hear appeals from users or groups located in the EU about “everything from violence and incitement to hate speech to bullying and harassment,” CEO Thomas Hughes said.

“It could be everything from a case that relates to a head of state all the way through to a neighborly dispute,” Hughes said.

The Digital Services Act is a sweeping set of regulations that requires tech and social media companies operating in Europe to clean up their platforms under threat of hefty fines.

The Appeals Center, based in Dublin, where many Silicon Valley tech companies have their European headquarters, will start hearing complaints from users before the end of the year. It’s initially dealing with Facebook, YouTube and TikTok users because it wanted to start with the biggest platforms, with plans to add others later. Unlike the Oversight Board, which can cherry pick the biggest and most important cases, the center will have to rule on every case it gets.

The Oversight Board both issues binding decisions on individual cases, such as ruling in September on three separate posts with the controversial Palestinian rallying cry “ from the river to the sea,” and also weighs in on wider policy issues with non-binding recommendations, such as guidance in July on updating Meta’s policies on non-consensual deepfakes after reviewing a case involving deepfake intimate images of two women.

The Appeals Center’s decisions, in contrast, will be limited to whether content such as a post, photo or video violates each platform’s rules.

Hughes said the center will hire staff from across the EU to handle what he said could be up to tens of thousands of cases each year. The staff will have expertise in specific regions, languages and policy areas.

Meta’s Oversight Board is providing 15 million euros ($16.5 million) in startup funding, said Hughes, who was previously the Oversight Board’s director. He added that the two bodies will operate separately but will “point in the same direction in terms of platform accountability and transparency, user rights” and applying a human rights framework to online speech.

The Appeals Center will fund its ongoing operations by charging tech companies 95 euros for every case it hears, as well as a 5 euro fee from users who raise disputes. This “nominal” fee is intended to stop people from “gaming or abusing” the system and will be refunded if a user wins, Hughes said.

The decisions are not binding, but users will still get their money back if the center rules in favor of their disputes, regardless of the action the platform does or does not take.

There’s a 90-day deadline for decisions, but in most cases they will be made much more quickly, he said.

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Associated Press writer Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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October 8, 2024
Deadly flooding in Central Europe made twice as likely by climate change

WASHINGTON — Human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood and intensified the heavy rains that led to devastating flooding in Central Europe earlier this month, a new flash study found.

Torrential rain in mid-September from Storm Boris pummeled a large part of central Europe, including Romania, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany, and caused widespread damage. The floods killed 24 people, damaged bridges, submerged cars, left towns without power and in need of significant infrastructure repairs.

The severe four-day rainfall was “by far” the heaviest ever recorded in Central Europe and twice as likely because of warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists that run rapid climate attribution studies, said Wednesday from Europe. Climate change also made the rains between 7% and 20% more intense, the study found.

“Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” said Joyce Kimutai, the study’s lead author and a climate researcher at Imperial College, London.

To test the influence of human-caused climate change, the team of scientists analyzed weather data and used climate models to compare how such events have changed since cooler preindustrial times to today. Such models simulate a world without the current 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming since preindustrial times, and see how likely a rainfall event that severe would be in such a world.

The study analyzed four-day rainfall events, focusing on the countries that felt severe impacts.

Though the rapid study hasn’t been peer-reviewed, it follows scientifically accepted techniques.

“In any climate, you would expect to occasionally see records broken,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College, London, climate scientist who coordinates the attribution study team. But, “to see records being broken by such large margins, that is really the fingerprint of climate change. And that is only something that we see in a warming world.”

Some of the most severe impacts were felt in the Polish-Czech border region and Austria, mainly in urban areas along major rivers. The study noted that the death toll from this month’s flooding was considerably lower than during catastrophic floods in the region in 1997 and 2002. Still, infrastructure and emergency management systems were overwhelmed in many cases and will require billions of euros to fix.

Last week, European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged billions of euros in aid for countries that suffered damage to infrastructure and housing from the floods.

The World Weather Attribution study also warned that in a world with even more warming — specifically 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since preindustrial times, the likelihood of ferocious four-day storms would grow by 50% compared to current levels. Such storms would grow in intensity, too, the authors found.

The heavy rainfall across Central Europe was caused by what’s known as a “Vb depression” that forms when cold polar air flows from the north over the Alps and meets warm air from Southern Europe. The study’s authors found no observable change in the number of similar Vb depressions since the 1950s.

The World Weather Attribution group launched in 2015 largely due to frustration that it took so long to determine whether climate change was behind an extreme weather event. Studies like theirs, within attribution science, use real-world weather observations and computer modeling to determine the likelihood of a particular happening before and after climate change, and whether global warming affected its intensity.

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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September 25, 2024