Ken Choo delivers everything Cardiff City fans want – for his other club
Ken Choo delivers everything Cardiff City fans want – for his other club
The Bluebirds chief is also managing director of Vincent Tan's other club, KV Kortrijk
Cardiff City CEO and KV Kortrijk managing director Ken Choo
(Image: YouTube/KV Kortrijk )
Cardiff City CEO Ken Choo has overseen the appointment of a new sporting director and operational director, citing his desire for more football knowledge and a nailed-down philosophy.
The problem for Bluebirds fans is, he's done it at KV Kortrijk, the other club Vincent Tan owns in Belgium. Choo, and Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman, is open to the idea of having that sort of infrastructure in place at Cardiff City Stadium, however getting Tan to see the merits appears a little trickier.
Some might wonder why Tan has green-lit two astute appointments in Kortrijk, but not at his blue-ribband club in the Welsh capital.
Well, it perhaps proves these appointments are not exactly a silver bullet. KVK had a sporting director and a CEO sports last season, however the club suffered relegation from the Jupiler Pro League and will now play in the second tier.
But Choo, Tan and the KVK hierarchy have moved quickly to restructure the top end of the club ahead of what will be a crucial summer if they are to achieve promotion back to the top flight next term. Join the Cardiff City breaking news and top stories WhatsApp community
A similar task awaits Cardiff, of course, however they have a weaker footballing structure at the top. Dalman is a non-executive chairman, while owner Tan lives thousands of miles away and Choo, of course, holds important positions at two European clubs.
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The Bluebirds CEO, however, has perhaps offered Cardiff fans a whiff of hope after speaking cogently about Kortrijk's latest appointments, with many points made hitting the nail on the head of what supporters in south Wales have been calling for.
Jelle Schelstraete has been named as operational director of football at Kortrijk, while Nils Vanneste takes on the role of sporting director as the club attempt to bolster its football leadership structure.
Schelstraete returns to KVK following a distinguished career that saw him rise through the ranks of Belgian football. He previously led the KVK academy before moving to the Royal Belgian Football Association (KBVB), where he served as assistant technical director under then-national team coach Roberto Martinez.
He later took on the role of operational director of football at the KBVB. Back at Kortrijk, Schelstraete will be responsible for optimising the operational structure of the club's sports department.
Joining him is Nils Vanneste, who began his coaching career in the KVK academy before taking on senior roles as sporting director at KV Oostende and Beerschot. In his new role at Kortrijk, he will be tasked with setting the club's sporting vision and strategy for the coming seasons.
"We could see that the club needs more people who have football knowledge, so we have appointed two people. Nils, who is our sporting director, who has a lot of pedigree and knowledge.
"And we have Jelle, who was from the FA, who is helping me to look at the long-term vision of football. So we have basically the best of both worlds. Two people who work very close together.
"The most important thing now is to get the philosophy right, get the manager in, then those players who are on the fence, not sure if they are coming or going, will settle down, once they understand the plan of where we are going.
"We don't want to have a situation where we hire a manager and they play with full-backs, then the next manager we hire plays with wing-backs and the club has to spend an enormous amount of money restructuring the whole team. So we have to understand the whole philosophy of the club.
"That's what they are doing now. That's what the discussion has been the last few weeks."
Just this week it was revealed that Cardiff have set up a sub-committee comprising head of academy Gavin Chesterfield, an external appointment from sporting agency Wasserman and former Swansea and Rangers sporting director Mark Allen to oversaw the shortlist process for the appointment of a new manager.
Many Cardiff fans believe someone from this one-off task force could hold a full-time role for continuity purposes — as Choo alluded to with his full-backs/wing-backs example — and for the club to have boots on the ground on a daily basis to direct the football operation.
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While that is not the plan at this stage, a positive experience with the selection of a new manager might help to change Tan's mind. Sign up to our daily Cardiff City newsletter here.
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