Ex-Monaco sporting director Tor-Kristian Karlsen explains what directors of football, sporting or technical directors do at Premier League clubs
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Directors of football, sporting directors, technical directors. All these roles have come to the top of the news agenda this season in the Premier League. First there was the departure of Newcastle United’s sporting director Dan Ashworth so that he could move to work with Manchester United’s part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who has already brought in Jason Wilcox from Southampton as a technical director.
The powers of Wenger and Ferguson in all aspects of their football clubs were practically total Meanwhile up the M62, Liverpool have agreed to hire Richard Hughes as a sporting director from AFC Bournemouth following on from the appointment of Michael Edwards (above left) as CEO of football at the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group.
To help understand what these different roles mean, Tor-Kristian Karlsen, a former sporting director at AS Monaco and at Maccabi Haifa, will explain. What is a sporting director/technical director etc? On the one hand it’s the same thing and on the other, it isn’t… at least when it comes to the Premier League. Confusing? Let me explain.
These roles are relatively new to English football and have been introduced to clubs at varying times, so the titles tend to differ according to what each particular club decided to call them. In essence, though, they do pretty much the same thing. Dan Ashworth, right, joined Newcastle from Brighton, but has left for Man Utd The director of football (DoF) title appears to be a lingering anachronism from the bygone days when the managers tended to be all-encompassing operators.
Think of the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, whose powers in roughly all aspects of their football clubs – bar finances and commercial operations – were practically total. Not that those managerial legends ever worked under or together with a DoF, but at other places – such as David Pleat at Tottenham Hotspur – the transfer activity (i.e. scouting, negotiations) was moved away from the manager’s remit and assigned to a DoF. Then, as now, the DoF would typically report to the owner, chairperson or the board, but the lines of command back in the day would often be nebulous and hard to understand.
Some managers reported directly to the upper echelons, while others didn’t. Equally, some managers were happy to work under such a structure, whereas others were less enthusiastic. However, with the emergence of foreign owners in the Premier League clearer management structures – akin to those in continental Europe – have been put in place. And with that arrived the figure of the sporting director (or SD). Michael Edwards, left, has returned to Liverpool as CEO of football for the club's owners While the areas of responsibility still vary from club to club – no structure is identical – the general principle is that the sporting director entertains stronger mandates, reporting directly to the top dogs (owner, chairperson or the CEO) with the manager – now generally known as head coach – placed, in most cases, below the sporting director in the organisation chart.
That said, the media and the fans still interchange DoF/sporting director willy-nilly when referring to the roles. What are their roles and responsibilities at a club? With the semantics out of the way, here’s a look at what a sporting director actually does, or is supposed to do. We’ll stick to this term from this point onwards as it can be described as a modern version of the DoF and that’s what those acting out the role prefer to call themselves; there’s even a UK-based association for/of sporting directors.
Richard Hughes, centre left, has left AFC Bournemouth to become technical director at Liverpool The overriding idea is for one executive to have overall responsibility for the footballing side of a club. To secure continuity it’s better that this isn’t the head coach, as they tend to come and go. In an ideal world the sporting director will lay out a 360-degree strategy for the club, making sure that it is aligned from Academy level through to the first team. Aligned in this context means adopting the same development principles and working methods, thus facilitating a swift adaptation for Academy graduates to the playing style of the first team.