logo
ENFRع
#

Latest news with #sportingdirector

Inside the world of sporting directors: What do they do? And what makes a good one?
Inside the world of sporting directors: What do they do? And what makes a good one?

New York Times

time20-07-2025

  • Business
  • New York Times

Inside the world of sporting directors: What do they do? And what makes a good one?

Players are the focus of any football transfer storyline. Managers, agents and club owners add to the intrigue, of course, but it's a relatively new role which has been garnering increased attention with every transfer window — the sporting director. Fundamentally, the remit of the sporting director is to be be a link between the coaching staff and the club's hierarchy, providing continuity, sustainability and a stable strategy in the club's football operations. Advertisement 'The sporting director is the safeguard of the culture of the club,' says Damien Comolli, Juventus' general manager and previously sporting or football director at Fenerbahce, Liverpool, Saint-Etienne and Tottenham. 'We need to make sure that short term, medium term and long term are looked at with the same level of interest.' While sporting directors were scarce in the Premier League at the start of the 21st century, they have become the norm at top-level clubs, with many known among fans by name. Last October, Txiki Begiristain announced that he is leaving Manchester City this summer after 12 years at the club, with Hugo Viana replacing him. On the other side of the city, controversy ran high when Dan Ashworth left his role as Manchester United sporting director after just five months in the role. Former Atletico Madrid sporting director Andrea Berta was confirmed as Arsenal's new sporting director in March, replacing Edu after the Brazilian's shock resignation in November to join ​​Evangelos Marinakis' multi-club group. Meanwhile, Richard Hughes arrived as Liverpool's sporting director last summer with a daunting in-tray that included crucial contract negotiations for star trio Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold. The lens on the sporting director has never been sharper, yet what they do is still often misunderstood. To gain a better understanding, The Athletic interviewed several sporting directors and collaborated with analytics company Traits Insights who collected data — including sporting background and experience — on over 300 sporting directors (or equivalents) across 15 major European competitions. Crucially, what makes a successful one? For all the attention it has garnered, there is still ambiguity about the role itself between different clubs. The title of 'director of football', 'sporting director', 'general manager', 'chief football officer' and 'technical director' are ultimately synonyms for the same job, though what clubs expect from that job does vary. Advertisement While the role of a head coach or manager is clearly defined, a sporting director does not have a one-size-fits-all approach. Depending on the level of the club or league, the infrastructure built around the role can vary hugely. For some clubs, there will be a single director who sits at the centre of the system; for others, there will be shared responsibilities spanning multiple roles. 'In Germany, you might have a sporting director, a 'kaderplaner' (head of recruitment), a technical director, and then an executive only responsible for sport,' says Jonas Boldt, former sporting director at Hamburg and Bayer Leverkusen. 'When you also think about the coach too, this can have issues at times, because it is difficult to know who has the power or responsibility, and where to share those roles out clearly.' The fact that football is developing so rapidly, not just the Premier League, has added to the uncertainty over exactly what the sporting director is responsible for. As Comolli says, 'The structure of clubs is changing.' 'These roles have existed for much longer in Germany, Italy and Spain than it has in England,' he continues, 'but I would not distinguish from country to country — I would say the industry is changing as a whole. 'In the last five years, I've seen the role evolve. For example, Manchester City were very successful with Txiki (Begiristain), and then they brought Simon Timson in as a performance director (in 2020), who gets involved in a lot of areas. 'Ten years ago, I would have told you that they are taking work from each other, but actually they complement each other really well — the job of one becomes two, and the industry is now going in that direction.' Brentford is a good example of two roles dovetailing together in the Premier League. Director of football, Phil Giles, is responsible for squad management, squad planning and contract renewals at the club while technical director, Lee Dykes is in charge of Brentford's recruitment department. Advertisement The two work in tandem towards a shared goal of ensuring the best possible talent ends up on the pitch — or as Giles puts it, 'Mine and Lee's job is to do the nuts and bolts of the transfer.' When looking through the number of sporting director (or equivalent) roles across Europe's major leagues, the contrast in structure starts to become clearer. As Comolli said, sporting director roles have long been established in Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as in the Netherlands, with a minimum of one position filled within each club across each of those respective leagues. Ligue 1 had the lowest share of sporting directors within the league, with 15 of 18 clubs having a position filled. With the Premier League catching up in recent years, 19 of the 20 clubs had at least one sporting director (or equivalent) in place last season — up from 13 out of 20 in 2016-17. Of the 20 clubs, eight (40 per cent) split the structure across two roles, akin to Giles and Dykes. Previous experience among sporting directors can vary significantly. Returning to Giles and Dykes as an example, the former gained a PhD in statistics before working his way up to head of quantitative research at Smartodds, which is owned by Brentford majority owner Matthew Benham. Meanwhile, Dykes joined Brentford as head of recruitment after being sporting director at Bury FC — with a background in coaching having previously been assistant manager at Carlisle United. Analysis by Traits outlined four 'archetypes' that best describe the most common pathways sporting directors follow prior to landing the role. They are: Crucially, these archetypes are not mutually exclusive. Rather than pigeon-holing specific sporting directors to specific categories, it is better to think of the diverse pathways as a Venn diagram with plenty of crossover in the skills that are acquired from the respective backgrounds. 'I would add one other pathway, which is the academy pathway,' says Comolli. 'Dan Ashworth comes from an academy background, for example. Sassuolo have won promotion back to Serie A this season, and their sporting director, Francesco Palmieri, was the club's academy manager for nine years before he got this role. Incidentally, he was also a former player himself.' Advertisement It is a sentiment shared by others across the industry, with a club's academy acting as an ideal breeding ground for a role within the senior set-up. 'I think working as an academy manager can be a useful step to prepare (to be a sporting director),' says Johannes Spors, sporting director at Southampton and formerly of multi-club 777 Partners, Genoa, and Vitesse Arnhem. 'You basically make the same decisions, just with less financial impact. At times, academy directors manage more staff members than I do, but the decisions simply become more impactful the higher you get.' It is common for appointed sporting directors to arrive into their roles having had experience elsewhere within football clubs. For example, Norwich City's sporting director Ben Knapper was the loan and pathway manager at Arsenal before making the move to the Championship side. However, Traits' analysis showed that 17 per cent came from non-technical roles or roles outside of football altogether. A notable example would be Tottenham Hotspur's recently departed chief football officer Scott Munn, who held roles in commercial operations of the National Rugby League and Australian Football League before later working as a CEO at Melbourne City and later ​​City Football Group. His role at Spurs as chief football officer saw him focus more on football strategy, with the role created after an external review of the club's footballing activities. The core management skills and business acumen required to fulfil the role are often separate from the football industry itself. There can often be a cyclical criticism between 'people who know the game' and 'those who know how to run a successful business' when discussing those within the boardroom, but the evidence shows that having a background within football is not always a precursor to working within the industry. As a further example, Aston Villa's director of football operations, Damian Vidagany, worked as a journalist in his early career before taking a role as Valencia's chief media officer and later becoming chief executive of DV7, a media agency founded by former Spain international David Villa. Working alongside Monchi, the renowned sporting director who is now Villa's president of football operations, Vidagany is regarded as one of Unai Emery's most trusted colleagues as the club aims to re-establish itself among Europe's elite. 'My role allows Monchi to be focused on the sporting and scouting side of football, creating and developing a strong network of scouts,' Vidagany said in 2023. 'We work as Batman and Robin because the structure of Villa needs to grow very fast.' In his current role at Southampton, Spors is keen to highlight that a large part of being a good sporting director is about appointing the right people and developing the club's structure. 'I think it's getting more and more important that you are simply a good leader for the organisation,' says Spors. 'This is the most important thing. There is such a diversity of clubs and how they see their identity, but diversity is always the best — it is important to have people from every background. Advertisement 'For example, data is obviously becoming more important in this space — especially with the rise of American ownership. When I arrived at Southampton, the first thing I did was to hire my assistant (Elliott Stapley), who was the former head of data and analytics at 777, and the second thing I did was to change the whole recruitment structure to make sure the data and analytics team were reporting to me.' Much like the role itself, measuring success depends on the context of the club. Silverware might be the ultimate physical representation of success, but victories can be just as important off the pitch as on it. 'This is a very technical job, so I need to innovate each department to make sure that we have a communication structure and a leadership structure with accountability in every department,' says Spors. 'The better we get there, the more we can increase the chance of on-pitch success.' For Boldt, who was sporting director at Hamburg from 2019 to 2024, the club's finances impacted much of his tenure. The 2021-22 financial year was the first time the club posted a positive annual profit in 12 years. 'My job was to make the club more stable, to recreate the identity, to develop young players and to help the coaches to do their job,' Boldt said. 'I'm not there anymore, but it's the same team, and this project together was four years in the making — and we can now see the output from their efforts.' Now, the structure of the club is in a far stronger position after securing a return to the Bundesliga this season following six seasons out of the top flight. Last year saw the club record a financial profit for the third year in a row, with its Volksparkstadion stadium debts paid off two years ahead of schedule. While Boldt was not the one holding the purse strings, Hamburg's financial landscape meant he had to be skilful in ensuring the club operated within its means when buying and selling players. Advertisement 'To have success, you have to be one step ahead. Sometimes, you need to let young players go to another club and give them space to develop (elsewhere) — but in football, nobody sees this as success because you're often linked to how many titles you won,' he says. 'For a sporting director or executive, we are responsible for the strategy and the vision of the club. I understand that you need results, but Hamburg is more stable than ever before, with less debt than ever before. If we had been promoted immediately (back to the Bundesliga), it would have likely been a disaster because the club was unstable, but now the base is so much stronger than the years before. That is success for me.' Stability should be synonymous with the role. It might sound obvious, but a sporting director needs to be in the position for the long term to implement such stability, which has not always been the case among some Premier League sides. Ashworth left Newcastle United before his short-lived stint at Manchester United, with his replacement Paul Mitchell announced that he was also parting company with Newcastle last month after less than a year in the role — leaving the club with the task of appointing their third sporting director in rapid succession. Liverpool's appointment of Hughes brought stability to the club last summer after a disruptive 18 months that saw Jorg Schmadtke hired on a short-term contract following the departure of previous sporting director Julian Ward — who had only replaced Michael Edwards a year before. Had a long-term sporting director been in place, the public contract sagas involving Van Dijk, Salah and Alexander-Arnold might have been handled differently. The common thread is that nothing is ever guaranteed on the pitch, but the good sporting directors will find a way to control the controllable and give the club long-term improvement, regardless of short-term ups and downs. 'All I can do is try and increase the chance of success,' says Spors. 'As a sporting director, we can do much more than just sign players or a coach. We can build the culture. We can make sure every department is on the best level and is pushing to the next level.' 'Getting three points on a Saturday is just the result of all the work that sits behind it.'

Jason Ayto, Ross Wilson advance in Newcastle sporting director hiring process
Jason Ayto, Ross Wilson advance in Newcastle sporting director hiring process

New York Times

time02-07-2025

  • Business
  • New York Times

Jason Ayto, Ross Wilson advance in Newcastle sporting director hiring process

Jason Ayto and Ross Wilson have both held follow-up interviews for the vacant sporting director position at Newcastle United. No final decision has been made, but Ayto, the former Arsenal interim sporting director, and Wilson, Nottingham Forest's chief football officer, have advanced through a process which has been expedited due to Paul Mitchell's exit. Advertisement Mitchell left the club on Monday after less than a year in the role, while Darren Eales, Newcastle's CEO, is serving his notice after being diagnosed with blood cancer. Newcastle are in the final stages of appointing a new chief executive, with former Real Madrid executive David Hopkinson among the leading contenders. Before Mitchell departed, interim responsibility for overseeing transfer deals transitioned to Andy Howe — the assistant head of recruitment and the nephew of Eddie Howe, the head coach — and Steve Nickson, the head of recruitment. The pair are working collaboratively to try and sign players from an Eddie Howe-led transfer list of targets, but Newcastle are yet to unveil a senior addition this summer, having missed out on Brighton & Hove Albion's Joao Pedro to Chelsea and with Brentford's Bryan Mbeumo specifying a preference to join Manchester United instead. With the sporting director having already left and Eales to follow, Newcastle lack a stable senior executive structure and are in a state of flux off the field for a second successive summer. Amanda Staveley departed as co-owner last July and the appointment of Mitchell followed, which initially unsettled Howe. Whereas Howe was not informed of Mitchell's arrival until 24 hours before, the head coach has been made aware of developments at certain stages of the process this time. Ideally, Newcastle would prefer to bring in a chief executive before a sporting director but, should they decide upon the right candidate for the latter, those appointments could be reversed. Ayto and Wilson are certainly prominent among the owners' thoughts, having reached the latter stages. A former scout, Ayto had been with Arsenal for a decade and rose through the ranks to become assistant sporting director under Edu, leading an overhaul and modernisation of the club's recruitment department. When the Brazilian left Arsenal in November 2024, Ayto stepped up to become interim sporting director until the appointment of Andrea Berta. He left the club voluntarily at the end of last season. Advertisement Wilson has worked in senior positions at Southampton, Huddersfield Town, Watford, Falkirk and Rangers, who won their first league title for a decade during his tenure, and reached the Europa League final, before joining Forest in April 2023. Last year, before Mitchell was appointed, then-Crystal Palace sporting director Dougie Freedman and current Southampton sporting director Johannes Spors reached the final two for the post at Newcastle. Freedman was subsequently offered the job, but turned Newcastle down, eventually leading to Mitchell's arrival. Newcastle declined to comment on the present ongoing process for hiring a sporting director. (Top photos: Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images, Craig Foy / SNS Group via Getty Images)

What legacy does Paul Mitchell leave behind at Newcastle?
What legacy does Paul Mitchell leave behind at Newcastle?

New York Times

time30-06-2025

  • Business
  • New York Times

What legacy does Paul Mitchell leave behind at Newcastle?

Paul Mitchell's 12 months as Newcastle United's sporting director can be characterised by blunt words, consequences and contradictions. Mitchell is a straight-talker. Plenty of people inside St James' Park found this no-nonsense approach to be liberating, particularly in a business that has more than its fair share of 'bull**** bingo', as put by one senior figure, who, like others quoted in this piece, was speaking anonymously to protect relationships. Advertisement Initially at least, Eddie Howe reeled back from it. To Newcastle's head coach, Mitchell's candour was a wrecking ball, threatening damage to the 'family atmosphere' created during Amanda Staveley's spell as director and part-owner, where decision-making was intimate and intense. By contrast, Mitchell was all alpha-male swagger. Plenty, too, appreciated Mitchell's easy communication — formal monthly catch-ups with heads of department, but also regular calls and messages, checking in, offering support and trust, allowing those under him the freedom to do their jobs. His 'empowerment' of staff is mentioned frequently. Yet Mitchell's one big public intervention proved disastrous, certainly in terms of perception, when, in an interview with reporters last year, he asked whether Newcastle's recruitment had been 'fit for purpose in the modern game'. It prompted fury among people close to Howe and threatened more destabilisation. Strengths were also weaknesses. On his watch, there were no first-XI signings, described as '90 per cent' of his remit by Darren Eales, the outgoing chief executive, albeit his final fortnight in post brought a flurry of activity, enquiries and bids. Yet with Mitchell transitioning out, this was now orchestrated by Andy Howe, Newcastle's assistant head of recruitment and Eddie's nephew. On Mitchell's watch, there was also everything: Newcastle's first domestic silverware for 70 years and a return to the Champions League after finishing fifth in the Premier League. Some would argue that one happened despite the other, that the Carabao Cup win at Wembley was solely the triumph of Howe and his players. Others insist Mitchell's 'fingerprints are on the trophy', pointing to the arrival of James Bunce as performance manager, the lack of injuries, a willingness to 'push boundaries' in the search for improvement in a landscape now governed by the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSR). Advertisement Frugality in the transfer market — imposed, not willing — meant sustainability became a driving factor of Mitchell's tenure. Players have departed over the past 12 months, weakening Howe's squad, but Newcastle are now a club of winners with the financial strength to go again and with an increasingly professional women's operation. As Mitchell departs, they are healthier… sort of. Ultimately, it is an unfinished story. Mitchell spoke of a three-to-five-year plan but leaves inside one, with no big signings, no new training ground and no multi-club ownership structure established, even if there have been developments on all fronts. The majority of the calls he has made have been strategic, so the fruits may not be apparent for years. If sporting directors are supposed to be 'long-term club and cultural architects', then, like Dan Ashworth before him, Mitchell goes with the building work unfinished and with a sense of uncertainty about what happens next. One top-level source praised Mitchell's impressive staff appointments, his calmness in a high-pressure role, the way he dealt with Newcastle's owners and the sales he made, which have benefited Newcastle's bottom line, yet their overall conclusion is self-evident. 'He was not there long enough to do more,' they said. A narrative emerged in some quarters that the club led Mitchell's exit, yet it was the 43-year-old who decided to leave. Newcastle's owners responded by proposing alternative posts and, according to multiple sources, Mitchell's positive relationship with the hierarchy remains intact. Mitchell viewed his position as intrinsically connected to Eales, who brought him to the club at the start of July and then announced two months later he had been diagnosed with a chronic form of blood cancer. Eales, too, will be leaving soon. The long term quickly became the short term, which is not to say Mitchell has had no impact. One of Mitchell's first and most important acts was to appoint Bunce, and there has been widespread praise for the performance director's impact. Newcastle fielded the joint-second-fewest players (24) and made the second-fewest starting-XI changes (51) in the Premier League across the 2024-25 season. Advertisement Howe's ability to extract so much from a small group was made possible by Newcastle boasting one of the top flight's best injury records — a dramatic improvement on the nadir of the previous campaign — while still producing physical-output figures among the highest in the division, according to their own data. The effectiveness of Bunce's performance operation — any lingering disharmony between departments following the fallout from the previous year's injury crisis was patched up — also had a knock-on effect for Mitchell's attempts to reshape Newcastle's PSR situation. The January sales of Miguel Almiron and Lloyd Kelly for fees that could rise to a combined £31million ($42.5m) created decent headroom for the summer following three successive windows without acquisitions. Another intended consequence of the January sales, from Mitchell's perspective at least, was greater first-team opportunities being granted to academy graduates. Trevan Sanusi made his debut in the FA Cup in January, then Sean Neave, the forward, and Leo Shahar, the right-back, trained full-time with the senior squad from February to cover for the departed Almiron and Kelly. All three youngsters were 17 at the time but have since turned 18. In this landscape of financial limitation, Mitchell accelerated what Newcastle refer to internally as the 'emerging talents' programme. The sales of Yankuba Minteh and Elliot Anderson rescued Newcastle from a PSR blackhole a year ago and the hope is that summer signings Antonio Cordero and Vakhtang Salia will bring rewards down the line, either by breaking into the first team or being sold for a profit. Park Seung-soo — should he complete a move from K-League 2 side Suwon Bluewings — also shows the increased worldwide scope for youth recruitment that Mitchell has introduced. Advertisement Mitchell championed the recruitment of talented youngsters down through the age groups, with Newcastle's academy now boasting a record number of internationals, from under-14s through to the under-21s. Just as vitally, Mitchell has recognised that the academy is thriving under Steve Harper's leadership and has provided a platform for the club's former goalkeeper to get on with his job. This was a theme. Another person who worked with Mitchell says, 'I didn't need to ask his permission for everything. It was about keeping him up to date. If he thought something was a crap idea he would tell me, but he was also comfortable with me saying, 'I'm not sure about that'. It was empowerment. He gave me the comfort to know I could just crack on with things. That's a skill.' The growth of Newcastle's women's team has continued under Mitchell, who poured resources into the squad for their first Championship campaign and formed a strong bond with Becky Langley, the manager. A director of performance and recruitment and analysis staff were hired, while the appointment of the club's first standalone women's director of football — Grace Williams is set to arrive from Crystal Palace, as The Athletic revealed last month — is designed to expedite their rise to the Women's Super League. There has been an increased use of data and AI throughout the footballing operation, including how Newcastle identify prospective loan clubs for players or potential recruits from global markets, especially when it comes to playing-style similarities and in the performance and medical departments. There has been a 'huge amount' of preparatory work on the multi-club model, visiting and talking to prospective partners in other countries. Infrastructure investment has also taken place, with Mitchell working closely with Brad Miller, Newcastle's chief operating officer, even if much of the money has been directed towards interim upgrades. Advertisement At their Benton training ground, Newcastle are expanding into the car park, adding 1,350 square metres of office and meeting space. The changing rooms are being renovated at the academy and improvements have been made at Kingston Park, where the women's team play. A state-of-the-art training ground remains a concept, although Mitchell has visited potential sites within the city's boundaries. Much of his focus has been on the potential configuration between the men's and women's teams and the academy, and whether they can be housed within the same or separate venues. Three to five years is the latest soft timescale, though with planning permission yet to be lodged, that may prove ambitious. Those delays cannot be laid at Mitchell's door. Pretty much everybody who works at Newcastle comes to understand the slow pace at which Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the club's majority owners, reaches its 'process-driven' decisions. 'It takes an eternity to do anything,' one source says. In retrospect, Eales did Mitchell few favours with his '90 per cent recruitment' line. Mitchell's appointment had come as a shock to Eddie Howe, who received little advance notice, and there was immediate pressure on the sporting director to deliver signings after arriving midway through a transfer window. Mitchell did not comprehend the scale of Newcastle's problems with PSR when he took the job, either. 'He inherited a position which was impossible to navigate,' a colleague says. The sales of Anderson and Minteh ensured (marginal) compliance for the previous three-year cycle, but they had not solved the issue. Mitchell spent far longer studying cash-flow models with Simon Capper, the chief financial officer, than he envisaged, having to account for every contract renewal and every transfer decision, from youth to senior recruitment. When Mitchell led an ultimately futile month-long pursuit of Crystal Palace defender Marc Guehi last August — something he later claimed was part of a 'predetermined strategy' — it meant that, beyond the £10m acquisition of William Osula from Sheffield United, he failed to bring in a signing for Howe's squad. Advertisement The summer left Howe bruised. Staveley had been a fervent ally who kept him informed of everything happening at Newcastle. Now he was at arm's length. After the PSR shambles, uncertainty lingered in his dressing room. Mitchell was forthright, brusque, keen to make his mark. 'It was the wrong attitude to come in with,' an associate of Howe told The Athletic recently. 'If the club were really at a low point, then you could understand that idea of changing everything. It didn't need that. It just needed a bit of support.' Their relationship began strained and then eased, albeit the lack of incoming transfer activity meant it was rarely tested. The irony here is that others at Newcastle found Mitchell a far easier man to work with; direct and challenging, yes, but also eager to delegate and offer support. There was no first-XI addition in January, either, though that was signposted from the autumn. Mitchell — with at least some buy-in from Howe — believed Newcastle were better served selling fringe players and bolstering the PSR position, given the unavailability of long-term targets for reasonable fees. The rationale was that this would prevent unwanted sales by June 30, that it would give Newcastle greater ability to resist offers for their key players, such as Alexander Isak, and ensure a (relatively) healthy summer kitty. 'Sustainability' became the buzzword internally, with Mitchell adamant that the 'trading model' required tweaking long-term. What Eales and Mitchell had attempted to communicate during their separate interviews was that while Newcastle had an excellent post-takeover transfer hit record, financially, they had overstretched themselves. The ownership was adamant it could never go three straight trading periods without a first-XI signing again. Extracting a fee rising to £20m for Kelly, who had started only four league games after joining on a free from Bournemouth, underlines Mitchell's negotiating skills. Advertisement As someone close to Mitchell says, the timing of his departure is 'bittersweet'. Newcastle are trophy-winners, a Champions League club with a great manager, a great team and with scope to make a splash in the market. Yet they do not have a sporting director, a new CEO is still to be appointed, and they have not signed a senior player, all of which means the uncertainty of a year ago has returned in a different guise. There are big-picture questions: who sets the strategy? What kind of club do they want to be? Unlike 12 months ago — and, in part because of Mitchell — Newcastle are good to go. Which direction they go in is now somebody else's responsibility.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store