When Norwich City sold an Academy prospect earlier this season, they had a decision to make.
Use the money to invest in the first team on player wages or transfers – or look to the long term in the face of increasing pressure to compete in the Premier League?
The Canaries don’t have a billionaire backer and success needs to be sustainable, so a collective call was made to use the extra funds to invest in a £250,000 state-of-the-art training aid at their Colney base called the Soccerbot360.
The computerised football simulator – made famous by Ralf Rangnick after he introduced it at RB Leipzig – helps speed up reaction times and increases sharpness, with Borussia Dortmund swearing by their own version of the machine. Norwich are the first club in England to take the plunge, and will use it for every age group from under-9s.
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It is a conversation that strikes right to the heart of the role of the sporting director, a job that has become increasingly vital to English football after years in which it was viewed with mistrust.
In the Premier League, 18 clubs have someone in that role and another – Newcastle – is about to appoint one. Most of their names are known to fans but they rarely swipe the headlines and most prefer to maintain a relatively low profile.
But as we approach the transfer window, it’s worth knowing that a fair proportion of the heavy lifting before deals are announced will have been done by sporting directors and their team of staff before the player’s jazzy announcement video lands on Twitter.
“In previous generations the director of football role wasn’t understood very well – in fact, we got away from the term because of the negative connotations that it had and trying to include technical or sporting director,” Mike Rigg, the founder and association executive of the Association of Sporting Directors (ASD), tells i.
“Now people realise how big the operations of a football club are. Some of these Category One academies have in excess of 60 full-time members of staff and all of the technical or sporting directors in the job have to sit between supporting the manager to be successful now but secondly, building a more sustainable business model that keeps the club going in the future.
“The red flag in the past was over player signings. Who is signing this player? Is it you, the manager, or the director of football?
“I’ve never come across a model in my entire career when the technical or sporting director is signing players and telling the manager ‘this is what you’ve got’. Every director I work with is about giving the manager ‘first and last’.
“First is – what do you want or need? What is the profile and position? They go and do their work and come back with, say, five options. We think the number one is the best option but there’s alternatives.
“It’s not this battle of power anymore. Now the relationships are close and there’s real trust there. Where it goes pear-shaped is when clubs don’t have that relationship.”
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He speaks with real authority about a role he’s done in various guises, from the early days building – symbolically and literally – Manchester City’s impressive City Group to being part of the process that saw Fulham promote Ryan Sessegnon to the first team as a 17-year-old when Slavisa Jokanovic was petitioning for a left-back signing to push the Cottagers over the line in promotion to the Premier League.
Football’s transformation in the last decade has seen data revolutionise the sport. Wyscout and inStat mean a wealth of video resources of players all over the world for clubs at every level to tap into.
The manager can’t be across all of that – and sporting directors are often responsible for overseeing it.
“One of the biggest challenges is that balance. You have the ownership and leadership at the top and what they want is to be successful and a long-term sustainable success,” he says.
“I always remember (at Manchester City) Khaldoon Al Mubarak was so enthusiastic about youth development. He never got the credit for it. They do write a cheque and support the manager that way but he also had a passion for youth development and bringing players through in that way.
“The manager cannot afford to take his eye off the next game and win so the sporting director has to have foot in both camps. They know they’re only going to be successful if their manager is winning games. But you’ve got to balance that off against future opportunities to support the club.”
The Norwich story throws a light on how some of the best operators work.
That they opted for something to benefit the long-term is no surprise to those who realise the importance of sporting director Stuart Webber at the club.
Webber is an example of someone treading the line between the club’s long-term interests and the need to deliver on-the-field success. The Soccerbot won’t win points, but it’s benefits could be measured
“It’s fascinating, what you see at Norwich. They sold a player – a youth player – and part of the discussion was ‘How are we going to invest this money long-term?’” Rigg says.
“They could have bought a player but they decided to invest in something which will improve their players over the long-term. We had an opportunity courtesy of Stuart of going down and seeing this thing in action.
“What I thought initially would be a gimmick to start off with was actually far from it. It was really interesting to see how they were going to use it to develop their players.”
The Association of Sporting Directors was set up to share knowledge and best practice and it’s brought executives together from all over the globe. It’s also helped lance a few misconceptions about the role.
“The sport has changed so much in the last five to ten years,” he says.
“I was talking to Jamie Fullarton, who is Technical Director at Walsall and has a coaching and managerial background but he is adamant that it’s not what he wants to do anymore – so if at any point our manager goes to Benfica or somewhere, he’s not stepping in to that job because it’s not what he wants to do,” Rigg says.
“If you look at the profile of people who do the job, it’s so wide and varied now. You’ve got Rebecca Caplehorn who comes from an accountancy background and is really good on the governance and regulations and organisation.
“Then you’ve got Dan Ashworth, who was a qualified school teacher, then you’ve got Brian Marwood who was a player. You’ve got a really diverse background of people in that role now and there are some really good people doing it now.
“People like Michael Edwards – you won’t see them on back pages or Sky Sports, it’s not what they do. But they are helping to get things moving at their clubs and when they get it right, you can see how well it works.”
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